James John Garth Wilkinson : a memoir of his life, with a selection of his letters

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JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

j, j ,

JAMES JOHN
GARTH WILKINSON;

A MEMOIR OF HIS LIFE, WITH A
SELECTION FROM HIS LETTERS;

BY

CLEMENT JOHN WILKINSON.

" The things which are seen are temporal :
the things which are not seen are eternal."

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.

DRYDKN HOUSE, 43 GERRARD STREET, W.
1911

'is-

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

BIOGRAPHY 1

CHAPTER II

THE SWEDENBORGIAN . . . . .152

CHAPTER III

HOMOEOPATHY AND KINDRED DEBATABLE

MATTERS ...... 243

CHAPTER IV

APPRECIATIONS 284

INDEX . . 801

492951

JAMES JOHN
GARTH WILKINSON

CHAPTER I

BIOGRAPHY

THE following fragment of autobiography was written
by Dr Wilkinson in 1872, but the task unfortunately
was abandoned or postponed.

James John Garth Wilkinson was born in Acton
Street, Gray's Inn Lane, London, on the 3rd of June
1812 ; the eldest of the family of James John
and Harriet Wilkinson ; his father of Durham,
his mother of Sunderland. 1 His childhood was for
the most part spent in that neighbourhood, and he
played in the urban fields in which Acton Street
at that time ended.

1 He was the eldest of eight children born to his parents. His
father came ultimately of Danish stock, and descended from a
professional family, whose arms (originally granted to one Lawrence
Wilkinson in 1615) still figure in the Town Hall of the City of
Durham. John James Wilkinson was a Special Pleader, and in
that capacity numbered at one time five Judges among his former
pupils ; he was also for many years himself Judge of the Palatine
County Court in his native city, holding his jurisdiction from the
Prince Bishops of that day. Mrs Wilkinson, nee Robinson, had
among her ancestors the Penn family, whence spring the founder
of Pennsylvania.

1

S JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

Notwithstanding the care of a tender mother, his
childhood was full of dark shadows, partly from his
own nature, partly arising from those around him.
From his earliest recollection the thought of death
pursued him ; chiefly the thought of the dead, which
had been wrought into the fears excited by the
horrible tales told him by the servants. These
fears grew with his growth, and the anticipation
of the darkness of night made the days wretched.
This dread is the chief recollection of the days next
to infancy. He was always afraid in his little walks
of seeing some dead body carried in the streets.
Opposite the window in Acton Street, in an enclosed
field, there were fresh ox-skins hanging ; these
made a terrible impression for long. And once,
in a journey to Sunderland by coach, among some
nettles at the back of the hotel, he thinks at
Grantham, he encountered a dead rat, and fell in
fear among the nettles ; and was found, and brought
to the coach. As time went on, the craving thought
of the day was, how long the piece of candle allowed
to go to sleep by should be. He generally outwatched
the longest pieces, buried under the bedclothes.
He was weak and ailing through his childhood.

From a dear religious mother he got no consolation ;
nothing that took away superstitious terrors, or
reconciled death with nature. His grandmother,
Mrs Robinson of Sunderland, and his aunt, Mary
Robinson, did their best to answer his questions,

BIOGRAPHY 3

but the grave and its belongings were not to be
disposed of. The horrors instilled into his mind
by servants reigned supreme. Beyond the coffin
and the vault no tale reached home to his heart.

The second woe of Acton Street was the parting
from home in the morning to go to day-school
in Gray's Inn Lane. It was an overwhelming
sorrow, and lasted more or less all his schooldays.
The contrast between grandmother and aunt and
the rest of the world was unspeakably great and
painful. And his shame was excessive at the red eyes
which he took to school. The fear of the red eyes
was the chief handle that could be used to quiet him.

These are the main points remembered : early
affections tender, and reared in a hothouse to boot ;
and ghastly and ghostly fears from within and from
without. One other recollection.

As a child he had a fatal facility of picking up bad
words from the boys in the street, without in the
least taking their meaning ; and the occasional
repetition of these at home entailed upon him
severe punishment, sometimes exclusion from the
family for several days. He remembers the bitter-
ness of his mother coming into the little front parlour
where he was confined with the servant, and not
speaking to him, or allowing him to speak, because
he had been wicked with his tongue. The remem-
brance, which may be a mistake, is as of a long
period of durance.

4 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

He must have had pleasures during this period
of his life ; but he does not recall them. For the
rest, the circumstances remembered were poor
enough, and the home comforts, and the home sweet-
ness and cleanliness were far below what nurseries
and children of the middle class at this day enjoy.
Little eyes and noses are critical, and lay up as
memories the smells and sights that are not proper,
and protest against them inwardly, even though
they have had no other experience to go by.

During these years he was taken to Sunderland
by his aunt and grandmother, and well remembers
the start in the coach from the great inn-yard,
name forgotten (Saracen's Head ?), near Holborn
Hill. There were boys going to a Yorkshire school
as inside passengers, and when they had cried
themselves to sleep, they slid down to the bottom
of the coach. At Islington, passing the sheep pens
there, he looked out, and asked if it was Sunderland.
The journey for two or three days and nights con-
tinuously was a new world, and he remembers hill
and dale, kind gentlemen on the way, the Yorkshire
mountains in the right hand distance, tender interest
in the little Yorkshire schoolboys, and on the last
morning, the low stone walls on entering Sunder-
land, and then great aunt Maria Blakiston running
by the coach- side for some distance before the coach
reached its destination.

He does not know if this was his only early visit

BIOGRAPHY 5

to Sunderland ; but if it was he might be seven
years old, and he spent a year with his aunt and
grandmother in the North.

But he is probably anticipating. Before the year
in Sunderland the family removed from Acton
Street to a better house in the New Road, No. 8
Seymour Place, opposite to where New St Pancras
Church now stands, but which at that time was a
region of nursery gardens, extending nearly from
Battle Bridge (now King's Cross) to Tottenham
Court Road. Here he remembers some of the
births of his brothers and sisters. He now went
to school to the Misses Norgate in Burton Street, and
for the first time, as it appears, had other children
for friends and companions. He calls to mind
no learning, but friendly schoolroom battles, side
against side, in which the little combatants rushed
shouting at each other, and the shock was glorious
to relate at home. One incident fixed itself, and
was not understood. A governess in Miss Norgate's
school in a fit of anger cut off all her own hair.

Next he went to school to Miss Grover, living
in a street off Euston Square, whose father was
Master of the St Pancras National Schools. Some-
times his father took him and his brother William
on Sunday after church to the National School,
and placed them in class there, and he felt surprise
and sense of power in the multitude of boys assembled.
At Miss Grover's for the first time he began to learn,

6 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

and to like learning ; and at the end of one half year
he received for prize a silver pencil case which then,
as now, was like no other silver pencil case. It
can be recollected without an effort, which is not
the case with others. Miss Grover was a neat,
trim, kind young lady, both precise and persuasive,
and he well remembers the sweetness of her influence ;
he saw her the day before her death a year or two
ago, still fine, trim and sweet, unspoilt by her passage
through the world, and little changed by her clean
old age.

All this time the ghastly fears went on, and dreams,
nothing in themselves, influenced the years. One
dream was full of mortality. It was a dream of a
procession of swans, a funeral procession, as it were,
walking funereal plumes, coming down the New Road,
and entering a great vaulted cathedral with tombs
around. The spirit of death was strong in the dream.
Another experience of sleep was not a dream but a
sensation as of infinity in the substance of the
brain ; a feeling of the sands of infinity ; from
what he now knows a kind of anatomical feeling
of the pulp of the brain itself acted upon by some
subtle overwhelming influence, which gave no pain,
but was soft, smooth, and horrible to bear and to
remember. It occurred now and then, and he
generally woke with it, for if it had lasted it seemed
as if it must destroy him. In his waking hours
about this time, once for several days, he had the

BIOGRAPHY 7

impression of having committed the sin against
the Holy Ghost, and the misery of being inconsolable
by his dear mother, aunt, and grandmother, of being
beyond their kind boundaries in his thought, was
bewildering. This state soon passed away under
their kind ministrations.

Another strange thing was that being for his age a
good penman the pencil case, he thinks, was for pen-
manship he wrote on ruled lines in a little book
prayers to the Devil, full of bad words ; he felt
powerfully moved to write them, and a sense of
independence in the act. These peculiarities are
nearly all that stands out at this time. The fatal
swans, the smooth horror rolling in his head during
sleep, the despair of unpardonable sin, and the doing
what he liked in the prayers to the wicked one.
Straws of influences and nothing more, but they
seemed then as now to belong to the life of life.

Probably he was taken from Miss Grover's ex-
cellent eye, to make the journey to Sunderland
already mentioned. The year passed in the North
was the first year of remembered pleasures ; the
aunt and grandmother were at Sunderland, and he
was their boy. He was there placed at school, and
being an exceedingly timid and shamefaced boy, he
held his own with great difficulty among other boys ;
they perceived his want of resistance, and invaded
it, as boys do by their law of pressure, without mercy.
He recollects learning nothing but the multiplication

8 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

table ; with one horrible exception, dancing. Having
no ear for music, and unbounded shame about his
own person, utter absence of ease or pleasure even in
the movement of walking before others, dancing was
a degradation unspeakable. It revolted him. The
fear of being let into it made it impossible to get him
to children's parties, where it might occur, and where
also games of forfeits in which some penalty of action,
such as kneeling in the middle of a room, might be
demanded of him. His greatest trial in Sunderland
was the ball of the dancing school at the Assembly
Rooms, round which were ranged parents and friends
in appalling numbers. He had to take part in one
dance, and his face, and body, and arms, and legs
were all made of shame ; he just lived through it.
No one knew what it cost, or how little his degrada-
tion of nature could be consoled or reached from
without. The deepest depth of it all was that in the
whole matter he was in partnership, forced partner-
ship, with little girls, who were beings he could not
understand ; he was so ashamed of them and of
himself. He is not quite sure that the " soft smooth
horror " of his sleep was not the spirit of all these
shames ; the gulf by which they got into his brains.
But he had also more boyish experiences in the
North, and occasionally took part with the rough
lads of whom the school consisted in raids and forays
in the town. The sense of the power of gathered
boys, their numbers, their mighty shouting, excited

BIOGRAPHY 9

and delighted him. It was as a unit, when eyes
seemed turned on him, that his weakness came.

At holiday times, and on half holidays, he used to
go to Ryhope, to his grandmother's cottage there,
where he was completely happy. The milk-boys on
donkeys, seated between two barrels of milk, came
in from Ryhope to Sunderland, and, whenever he
was permitted, he rode back with Jemmy Bone, the
son of his grandmother's tenant, between the empty
barrels, and spent the night at dear Ryhope. The
farmyard, the granary, the straw-loft, the little
garden full of gooseberry bushes with a high stone
wall round it, Ryhope pond, the largest inland water
he had seen, a long strip of water deeply and
mysteriously abutting on fenced fields, mysteriously
because who could imagine the depth there, and with
many swallows playing over it, all these were adequate
blessings to his childhood. The road through a gate
of whale jaw-bones along beautiful lanes to the
Tunstall Hills, to a small property of his father's
called Holichar Sides ; the walk to Ryhope Dean,
the most romantic spot he had then seen, and the
little village of Seaham ; and the path from the
bottom of the village of Ryhope to the sea, are still
his most precious memories of scenery.

The picnic of picnics happened to him in this year ;
his father was at Sunderland, and a large party of
ladies and gentlemen went along the coast towards
Castle Eden in a covered van ; a merry and uproarious

10 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

party. At the destination he strayed away among
the fells, and there found mountain bushes, junipers,
and other plants of such regions, which were as parts
of a new world to him. And on the same day in a
rocky cove he came upon a moored boat, and got
into it, when it went out to sea to the length of its
rope, and the situation, with its beauty of clear depth
of water, seemed and always will seem the beginning
of adventure. The number of new things in the
world this day, and the largeness of them, surprised
him. He found to his inexpressible satisfaction that
there were such places as wilds. It was like being
let into a large property which made the former
poverty apparent.

This day stands out. And also in this year another
of the Bones, in the summer evenings, used to take
his gun, and go out with the boy to shoot small birds
in the hedges ; " yellow yowlies " sometimes, and
even blackbirds. His delight in a gun was very
great ; it was the most beautiful of objects, the
possession of it betokening manhood. He was fond
to a degree of having and admiring the dead birds ;
he loved them, and had no idea of wrong done them ;
and though he knew they were killed, he had never
been told there was inhuman cruelty in the act, and
so he loved to see them shot, and loved them after-
wards. The passion for a gun went all through his
boyhood, though he had none of the physical
faculties which make a sportsman. It was the first

BIOGRAPHY 11

romance of the power of skilful destruction ; the
penetration with this into beautiful parts of nature ;
and the possession of the coy birds unwilling to be
acquired. There must have been a good many
young passions in it or it could not have been so
fascinating.

These small pieces of memory are nearly all that
survives of this delightful year, in which he was sur-
rounded by grandmother and aunts and great aunts,
and at home as he had never been before. One dear
old friend of the family, Miss Ridley, of Villiers
Street, Sunderland, was equal to any of his relations
in her kindness, and the jargonel pear-tree in her
garden was a part of her sweetness. Old Molly and
younger Betty, her servants, were among his best
kindred, and they so conceited him that he used to
deliver long and loud addresses caught from the scant
politics of the parlour, from the kitchen dresser. He
thinks they were either for or against Queen Caroline ;
but that is doubtful. No stream of this public
speaking has entered into his later life. He was
evidently a very timid, shamefaced boy, with strong
feelings and vivid words when they dared to come out;
and very very ignorant of control except by timidity,
and of the consequences to himself or others when he
let his passions and actions go free.

His maternal great granny died when he was at
Sunderland, and this fed his fear of death, which
otherwise abated during this year, because grand-

12 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

mother or aunt were always near him, awake and
asleep. He could not be got into the house where
his good old ancestor's body lay.

At last a strange morning came at Ryhope, a
morning known for some time to be coming. He
was to go back to his parents in London. That
morning he was indulged with loving indulgence,
and granny and Aunt Mary were with him heart and
soul to the last. He plucked a blue Iris bud I see
it now from the little front garden of the cottage ;
and then the coach from Sunderland to London
stopped at the gate ; he was given into some old
gentleman's charge, and he remembers nothing
more but that he commended him for the journey,
guarded his lily for him, and I suppose took him
home to Seymour Place. He does not recall the
meeting at home, in which he sank into one of several ;
his mother was ever dear and warm; but his aunt
and granny had become his mother.

Shortly after this he met his brother, William
Martin Wilkinson ; he was staying in the country, I
think at Perry Hill, and he was taken thither ; the
meeting was in a field. He had looked forward to it
ignorantly but with desire ; and when they had
rushed into each other's arms, he was amazed that
he could not speak, and was crying. It struck him
as so odd that he was crying, and yet so happy to
have his brother.

He might now be about nine years old, and there

BIOGRAPHY 13

were four or five sisters and brothers of them at
home.

Here the fragment of autobiography comes to an
end, before the middle of that period in each life
which is particularly sparse of preserved details.
It does not present a picture of happy childhood ;
without indicating anything morbid in the child, it
suggests self-analysis and introspection, though these
qualities were in reality perhaps the thoughts of
adult life unconsciously transferred back to the events
and times which they concerned.

It must have been soon after his return from
Sunderland that the boy was sent a large private
school at Mill Hill, kept by Messrs Thorowgood and
Wood, who moved, during his pupilage, to Totteridge
in Hertfordshire. The few letters of this date which
have been preserved are mainly interesting by reason
of requests for books from home. The boy thanks
his father for having sent him Milton's poems. " I
am sorry to say that Mr Thorowgood opened the
parcel and took " Roderick Random " away, because
he did not think it proper for me to read." He asks
at various times for Seele's " Analysis of the Greek
Metres," Anacreon's odes, " The Lady of the Lake,"
"The Lay of the Last Minstrel," Campbell's
"Theodoric" and "The Pleasures of Hope," also
for Sir William Jones' poems. He is taking in Lord
Byron's poems as they appeared in serial numbers,
and speaks of spending some of the money which he

14 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

brought with him in books. In 1826 he gained a
prize for a poem of one hundred and sixty lines upon
" Babylon," and copies out all but sixteen lines,
" which were no great beauty to it," for his father.
This success justifies the requests for poets and gives
evidence of some early taste for versification, interest-
ing in view of his later production of Improvisations
of the Spirit. He appears to have had some dealings
with chemicals, as he was fined for burning his coat
with sulphuric acid. He lost his mother in 1825.
His frequent and long visits to his grandmother and
aunts at Ryhope, had made him little of a " mother's
boy," but her early death practically ended Garth
Wilkinson's knowledge of home life until he made a
home for himself on his marriage. He left Totteridge
with a very favourable report in 1829. He main-
tained a friendship with Mr Thorowgood until the
death of that gentleman in 1860. On parting with
his pupil, Mr Thorowgood said : " Now mind you,
you keep up your Latin, you'll want it," a prophetic
remark to one who was to spend much labour in
translating the Latin of Swedenborg.

The boy was now sixteen, and had probably made
as good progress in classics and English literature
as could be expected from one of his years. The
time had come for him to choose a career. " Now,
James, I want you to choose your profession," said
his father. " I want to be a lawyer," the boy
answered. " I don't think that would suit you,"

BIOGRAPHY 15

was the reply. " I have already made arrangements
for you to be with Mr Leighton at Newcastle, to
be a surgeon." The advice of parents was apt
to be peremptory in 1829 ; but the medical pro-
fession specially demands self-devotion and aptitude ;
and it cannot be regarded as anything but a dangerous
experiment to throw a young and sensitive lad on
to its avenues not only without, but even against,
his expressed wishes.

Thomas Leighton was senior surgeon to the
Infirmary of Newcastle-on-Tyne. The bond for
the performance of covenants, etc., set forth in an
Indenture of Apprenticeship, was signed by Mr
Wilkinson, senior, on June 4, 1828, that being,
as it happened, the day following Garth Wilkinson's
sixteenth birthday.

His experience as a medical student, under
apprenticeship and in hospital, was almost contem-
porary with those of Albert Smith's " Mr Ledbury "
and Dickens' Bob Sawyer and Ben Allen. He
has left no details of them ; but it is plain that,
as the pupil of a senior surgeon to one of the best
of the provincial hospitals, he would act as his
master's " dresser " and be brought into practical
contact with such surgical work as was done in those
pre-antiseptic and pre-ansesthetic days ; his other
duties consisted, no doubt, of drug- compounding
and of bleeding, and otherwise treating those whom
his master could delegate to a pupil. Whatever he

16 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

saw and did at this time, and for long afterwards,
had little effect in reconciling the child who suffered
daily and nightly terrors over the apparatus and
mystery of death to the practice of surgery or
medicine as boy or man. 1 Wilkinson, as he himself
said, at a much later date, was " schooled to bear
a dresser's part in the wards and in the operations
known and practised in that day, but hated them.
He knows what surgery means. From his very entry
into the shop of the Old Way, he never believed in
the good or truth of promiscuous drugging." It
was not until many years afterwards, when he had
embraced Homoeopathy, that he could say that
" he loves the healing art of which Homoeopathy is
the present crown," or that he could write : 2

" What is best, I take a leading interest in my
dear Medicine, and especially in Homoeopathy, and I
reckon myself truly fortunate to be able at length
to connect my mind to my daily work ; and to see
in the latter a most ample field for the exercise of
my thoughts."

But the routine education of an unwilling pupil
left him ever hostile to the Profession into which
it introduced him. Swedenborg prepared him

1 Some idea of the disgust which the hospital routine of the early
nineteenth century inspired in one who was destined to become a
surgeon of world-wide reputation, can be gathered from Syme's
Address on Surgery, delivered before the British Medical Association
in 1865.

8 Letter to Mr Henry James, November 14, 1852.

BIOGRAPHY 17

for Homoeopathy, and Homoeopathy taught him to
love the healing art; but in 1870, when he was a
registered practitioner of thirty -six years' standing,
he wrote his pamphlet " A Free State and Free
Medicine," advocating, in his own words, universal
discharterment of medical bodies, and an embracive
penal code for illegitimate operations and deadly
drugging : every mortal operation and fee, to be
the subject of (? for) a jury.

In 1832 he came back to London, " walked "
Guy's Hospital for two years, and qualified as
Member of the Royal College of Surgeons and
Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in June
1834. He was granted the degree of M.D., honoris
causa, by the University of Philadelphia in 1853.
Once qualified in his profession, the necessity for
maintaining himself became pressing, and the
young surgeon lost no time in setting to work. He
found this first as a locum tenens at Aylesbury.

This engagement was necessarily a temporary
one, and on November 9, 1835 we find Garth
Wilkinson, helped by loans from his grandmother
and his maternal uncle, William Sewell, at the
Veterinary College, establishing himself as an
independent medical practitioner at 13 Store Street,
Bedford Square. The position of a medical man
in private practice differed then from that which
he at present enjoys ;, it was more that of an
apothecary than of a physician. Though called

18 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

upon to diagnose the diseases of his patients, and
charging for these services a small fee for attendance,
the greater part of his profits lay in dispensing his
own prescriptions and in selling drugs and plasters
over the counter of his " front shop " : the " back-
parlour " was often at once a consulting-room and
living room. The system was an unsatisfactory
one : for the patient, because it exposed him to
the necessity of swallowing drenches and boluses
in large numbers and quantity ; for the practitioner
in general, because it concentrated his interest and
attention upon routine prescribing and petty profit ;
for Garth Wilkinson in particular, because he, as we
know, " never believed in the good or truth of
promiscuous drugging." But it was the custom
of that day ; and a man without capital, influence,
or academic distinction was in no position to upset
or defy it.

But, while we have been following the education
and outset of our young medico, some extra-
professional events had occurred which were to
exercise strong and lifelong influence upon the
development of his character and the nature of his
work. One of the brothers of his mother lived
at Woodford in Essex, and he was a devout reader
and follower of Emanuel Swedenborg. On a visit
to this uncle, Mr George Robinson, Garth Wilkinson
received his first introduction to the voluminous
writings of the great Swedish mystic. Little as he

BIOGRAPHY 19

or his introducer could guess it, the initiation was
an event far reaching both for the man and the
doctrines. For the neophyte it was the opening
of conscious spiritual life, the first rapt sight of
possibilities for himself and his fellows ; possi-
bilities to the development and promulgation of which
he was himself to devote the longest hours and
deepest thoughts of a long life of deep thinking and
earnest humble work. For the doctrine it was
light and expression. For two generations of time
the writings had lain buried in a dead language,
under an accumulation of neglect all but universal.
The time was ready for their resuscitation, and the
man who could effect their freedom appeared. If
genius is the coincidence of the hour and the man,
a Swedenborgian genius was then engendered. It
was here, too, and almost at the same time, that
Swedenborg's champion met the companion who
was to comfort and encourage him along the path
which was opening before them all unwitting.
Miss Emma Anne Marsh, daughter of Mr William
Marsh, of Diss, Norfolk, was governess to Mr
Robinson's family. The meeting, late in 1833,
was at once recognized as momentous by the young
man, and two years later he was to learn that he
shared the recognition with her. There was the
inevitable pleasing torment of doubts and fears,
but on December 12, 1835, an engagement was
entered into and announced. It is not difficult

20 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

to think that the two events were complement al.
So at least thought one of the contracting parties.
Writing on the second anniversary of the engage-
ment, he says :

" This gloomier end of the year is now memorable
to me for two remarkable circumstances of my
life ; I mean my betrothing to thee, and my
acquaintance with the writings of Swedenborg ; two
events which, occurring almost in the same month,
have something spiritually of connexion with each
other. I can most truly say that I wish my reception
of both of you to be constantly progressing ; I
don't feel in either case that my affections are
lessened; I do not find that a nearer inspection
dissipates the fair things I have admired in both ;
and I do pray that we may be enabled to live over
the glorious things which are held out to us in those
books of which I hope we have something of a
common admiration."

From the time of his engagement to Miss Marsh,
letters passed between the fiances at nominally
weekly intervals, though there were not seldom
occurrences which made even more frequent com-
munication seem necessary. This long series of
letters (for they were not married until January
4, 184*0) would make it possible to construct a
diary of Garth Wilkinson's doings, hopes and fears,
and of many of his thoughts and aspirations. The
fluctuations of practice, pecuniary anxiety, his social

BIOGRAPHY 21

pleasures, his early literary labours, his judgments
of men and measures, are all set down in this journal
intime; but what concerns us more is the evidence
which it contains of growing character. The early
letters are those of a young man, little more than a
boy truly in love

Just for the obvious human bliss,
To satisfy life's daily thirst
With a thing men seldom miss.

But as the time goes by, responsibility and work,
professional and literary, each piece done honestly,
ponderings over the pages he translates, and over
the Introductions which he writes, do their work.
Some of the toil would have been sordid and souring
to one less in earnest ; but we see the writer of
pretty and sincere love-letters developing into the
strong loving man, just and firm of purpose, tender
to his fellows but hateful of the evil which comes
between them and their Maker : self reliant but
humble. It is a process which does not lend itself
to illustration by quoted passages, but the change
is writ plain in the letters and could scarcely fail
to be discerned.

It is not clear whether the purchase of the lease
of 13 Store Street carried with it the goodwill of a
medical predecessor, or whether the venture was a
breaking of new ground. In either case, the amount
of work to be found was small, at first very small ;

22 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

and there was ample time for other occupations
not incompatible with waiting for patients.
Wilkinson's mind was now fully engaged in the
study of Swedenborg's writings, and he was already
in touch with the Swedenborgian Society. He
began a course of reading in his many spare hours,
and gives an account of himself at the British Museum
Reading Room of that day. 1

" Fancy to yourself three very large and splendid
rooms, equalling the King's library in the whole
length of the suite, and filled with all the thinking,
literary, and antiquarian faces in London, with deep
silence prevailing over the whole assembly, and you
will have a picture of a curious kind. 'Tis like a
huge schoolroom, where all the (old) boys are really
bent on improvement, each man having before him
some huge old tome, and in general a notebook, into
which he is transcribing the cream of wisdom." He
appears impressed by the example of his seniors, to
have opened his studies in a " History of Philosophers,"
and marked that all were mentioned but Swedenborg.

His zeal for the cause, and his evident desire to
spend his energies in furthering it, soon led to his
obtaining a commission from the Swedenborgian
Society for a translation from the Latin of their
master. It was a huge piece of work : the translator
passed through the usual stages of hope, despair, of
plodding and feverish work. These moods are reflected

1 Letter to Miss E. A. Marsh, August 8, 1836.

BIOGRAPHY 33

in his correspondence. At one time he writes, " I am
now quite certain that authorship is not my forte :
nay, that it is not possible to me " ; at another, " I
have been steadily and methodically getting on with
the Translation of the ' Doctrine of Charity,' the
corrected copy of which I have now half finished. I
think I improve in translating ; and especially in
gradually gaining a finer perception of the minutiae
of meaning in the author's Latin ; for there are many
things which a person might never know, without
being detected in any grievous omission, but which, if
he does know, will gradually give a finished accuracy
and an air of refined meaning, which the reader will
feel, if he does not intellectually detect it. Such are
the renderings of many little words, and many short
arms of sentences, which frequently occur, and which
have always been stumbling-blocks. I think I am
now getting a few formulas in my head for some of
them, and when I have done this I can readily and
rapidly apply my knowledge."

He worked, through good cheer and evil cheer, to
such purpose that, having already published his trans-
lation of the " Last Judgment " and " Fall of Babylon,"
in November 1839 he is correcting at the same time
proofs of a volume of his own translation of the
" Arcana Ccelestia " and of a volume of the " Doctrine
of Charity " in Swedenborg's original Latin. Even
before the latter was published, he was contemplat-
ing a new and amended edition of it; and had

24 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

also laid out for himself another heavy piece of
work.

" 1 I have set myself another task ; and, not without
invoking the Divine Blessing. I have actually com-
menced it ; and am determined to ' do or die.' This
task is, the translation into English of Swedenborg's
great work entitled ' Regnum Animale ' or Animal
Kingdom ! It contains seven hundred closely printed
quarto pages, and I shall be about three years in
completing it ; but when I have, I trust, if I work
with a good end (the end is all), I shall have shown
that God intended a use to His children even through
me, and in manifestly becoming such an instrument,
and in most humbly becoming so, lies the only, the
greatest, glory which can belong to anyone, to woman
or to man. I calculate upon doing a page a day, and
I hope you will sit beside me and encourage me to my
duty. I do not intend to be in a hurry about it, nor
yet in an apathy. . . . The advantages will be great
(as to money, probably, in the first instance, none).
They will be, first, disconnected from self, the boon to
the English Public, and especially the Medical Pro-
fession, of the greatest and noblest work on Human
Physiology which has ever appeared in the world ;
and the disposing men's minds thereby to look up-
ward to the still more glorious truths which the author
of the work was the instrument of dispensing.
Nothing can be better calculated to effect this, than

1 Letter to Miss Marsh, October 8, 1839.

BIOGRAPHY 25

the ' animal kingdom.' It has solidity and depth,
beauty, philosophy, Reverence and Fact ! and all
these things in the highest degree. The advantages
to me will be, that the translating of the work will
lead me through the whole field of Physiology (the
most important one in medicine) as disclosed in this
and in many other authors ; and this will make me
a far more able professor of medicine. It will give
me a perfect facility in reading and knowing the
Latin language, and even some power of writing it, if
need be. It will make me a fair English writer, and
accustom me to the model of the finest writer of any
age or country. And it will give me a certain stand-
ing among the men of letters in the land, if I do it well.
Then, the greatest and first and last of reasons, I
shall be fulfilling a use for which, since He gave me
the power, I may think that the Lord designed me. I
am going on, therefore, and go on I will."

The work was begun in a high spirit ; it was one
which it needed high spirit to attack. It was longer
and harder than he who undertook it knew ; but he
finished it, and it was duly published in 1843.

But these were not to be the first fruits from Garth
Wilkinson's pen to reach the public eye.

In 1838, Mr Charles Augustus Tulk, then Member
of Parliament for Poole, lent Mr Wilkinson a copy of
William Blake's " Songs of Innocence and of Ex-
perience," a copy of William Blake's own making.
The " Songs," issued in many a modern series of

S6 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

English classics, are now to be found on many book-
shelves, and in many memories ; but in 1838 they
existed only in the prints struck off from the copper
upon which Blake had himself engraved in relief both
the text and the marginal illustrations. Of the
thirty pence which Blake and his wife owned for their
sole resource, on one occasion, twenty-two were spent
in the purchase of materials for the first impressions.
Surely determination to be heard could no further
go. The delicacy and spiritual simplicity of the
" Songs " made a deep impression on Garth Wilkinson,
who was himself to do somewhat similar work in his
Improvisations from the Spirit. His brother
William, holding no lower opinion, came forward
with the necessary funds ; subscribers were sought
high and low ; a preface was written, and the edition
(the first printed, in the usual sense of the word), a
thin cloth-bound octavo, was published jointly by
Pickering and Newbery on July 9, 1839. It consists
of twenty-one pages of preface and seventy-four pages
of text. It is a little book, which now finds a big
welcome from bibliophiles. Mr Gilchrist had diffi-
culty in obtaining it in 1860, when nearly thirty
shillings was its usual price. At five times that sum
it may be sought for in vain to-day ; but its editor
thought himself fortunate to introduce it to his
generation without loss. In his preface, after de-
tailing the then known facts of Blake's life, our
young author sets himself to examine the spiritual

BIOGRAPHY 37

claims of his poet. He falls foul of Allan Cunningham,
who roughly classed them as delusions. He says,
" In thus condemning the superficial canons by which
Blake has been judged, it is far indeed from our in-
tention to express any approbation of the spirit in
which he conceived and executed his latest works ;
or to profess to see good in the influences to which he
then yielded himself, and from which his visional
experiences proceeded. But since every human
being, even during his sojourn in the material world,
is the union of a spirit and a body the spirit of each
being among spirits in the spiritual, even as his body
is among bodies in the natural world it is therefore
plain, that if the mind has unusual intuitions, which
are not included by the common laws of nature and
of body, and not palpable to the common eye, such
intentions must be regarded as spiritual facts or
phenomena ; and their source looked for, in the ever-
present influences Divinely provided, or permitted,
according as they are for good or evil of our own
human predecessors, all now spiritual beings, who
have gone before us into the land of life. On this
ground, which involves the only pratical belief of the
immortality of the soul, and the only possibility of
the past influencing the present, it would be un~
philosophical and even dangerous, to call our very
dreams delusions. It is still, indeed, right that we
c try all spirits, at the judgment bar of a revelation-
enlightened reason ' ; yet, be the verdict what it may,

28 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

it can never retrospectively deny that spiritual
existence, on whose qualities alone it is simply to
adjudicate."

This is, of course, a short statement of the
Swedenborgian teaching concerning the factors which
condition " influx," and it is supported by a foot-
note : '' The true and unpopular doctrine on this
subject is so plainly set forth by our great modern
luminary, that we ask no excuse for inserting it here ;
more especially as it will assist the reader to the com-
prehension of Blake's state of mind." There follows
a long Latin quotation from Swedenborg.

The preface goes on to appreciate Blake's artistic,
and especially his poetic, position. Speaking of
Blake's terrible drawings of hell, it says : " We have
the impression that we are looking down into the
hells of the ancient people, the Anakim, the Nephilim,
and the Rephaim. Their human forms are gigantic
petrifactions, from which the fires of lust, and intense
selfish passion, have long since dissipated what was
animal and vital ; leaving stony limbs, and counten-
ances expressive of despair and stupid cruelty."
Blake's mind is then compared and contrasted with
that of Shelley. The preface concludes : "If the
volume gives one impulse to the New Spiritualism
which is now dawning on the world ; if it leads one
reader to think that all reality for him, in the long
run, lies out of the limits of space and time ; and that
spirits, and not bodies, and still less garments, are

BIOGRAPHY 29

men ; if it gives one blow, even the faintest, to those
term-shifting juggleries, which usurp the name of
' Philosophical Systems ' (and all the energies of all
the forms of genuine truth must henceforth be ex-
pended on these effects), it will have done its work
in its little day, and we shall be abundantly satisfied
with having undertaken to perpetuate it, for a few
years, by the present republication."

This preface appears to call for somewhat ex-
tensive quotation, primarily as being the first
original work of Wilkinson's pen ; and, secondarily,
as being difficult of approach for the general
reader. The vivid vigour of style and some of
the curious knowledge of the writer are already
visible.

The drawings of Blake deeply impressed his
admirer. " A few days ago," he writes on November
6, 1838, " I was introduced by my friend Mr Elwell
to a Mr Tathans, an artist, who possesses all the
drawings left by Blake. ... It was indeed a
not a treat, but an astonishment to me. The first
painting we came to realized to me the existence
of powers which I did not know are had in it. 'Twas
an infernal scene, and the only really infernal thing
I ever saw ' Life dies, Death lives ' might, as
Elwell said, explain the character of it. It was most
unutterable and abominable a hopeless horror.
Of the same kind were many of the others. On the
whole, I must say the series of drawings, giving me

50 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

an idea that Blake was inferior to no one who ever
lived, in terrific tremendous power, also gave me
the impression that his whole inner man must have
been in a monstrous and deformed condition
for it teemed with monstrous and horrid productions.
Those who would see Hell before they die, may be
quite satisfied that they veritably have seen it by
looking at the drawings of Blake. At the same
time, all the conceptions are gigantic and appropriate,
and there is an awful Egyptian death-life about all
the figures."

A belief in the truly spiritual nature of Blake's
inspiration is not inconsistent with deep suspicions
as to his sanity. " I received," he wrote on July
17, 1839, "the Designs, etc., of Blake's from Mr
Clarke ; comprising, I fancy, all those you saw. I
almost wish I had not seen them. The designs
are disorder rendered palpable and powerful, and
give me strongly the impression of their being
the work of a madman. Insanity seems stamped
on every one of them ; and their hideous forms
and lurid hellish colouring, exhale a very unpleasant
sphere into my mind ; so much so, that I confess
I should not like to have the things long hi my
house. ... I felt puzzled what to say of the man
who was compounded of such heterogeneous materials
as to be able at one time to write the ' Songs of
Innocence ' and at another ' The Visions of the
Daughters of Albion.' ' The Book of Thel ' is, partly,

BIOGRAPHY 31

an exception to the general badness or unintelligi-
bility of his verse and designs. I can see some
glimmer of meaning in it, and some warmth of
religion and of goodness ; but beginning to be
obscured and lost under the infatuating phantasies
which at length possessed its author. I should say
sanity predominates in it, rather than that the work
was a sane one. Some of the single lines are grand
and expressive."

But when a man is between twenty -five and thirty,
and a bachelor (though quite unwillingly), and full
of interest in life, physic and translation cannot
occupy all his time. His friend Mr Dow lived in
or near Store Street, and had a large and pleasant
circle of acquaintance into which he cordially
welcomed his young doctor. Mr Tulk, too, had
reunions of varying degrees of formality, where at
one time set debates on matters Swedenborgian took
place ; at others general social pleasures were
pursued. Among his brother professional men he
naturally made many friends, while as yet he had
not banished himself from among them by champion-
ing the unpopular doctrines of Halmemann. He
made the acquaintance of Robert Browning, and
heard a private reading of " Straff or d " at Mr
Dow's before seeing the first performance of the
play on May 1, 1837. ' You are curious to hear
about ' Strafford.' Well, you shall be told. . . .
We all formed a formidable body at the box door ;

m JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

. . . there were three dozen of us together. The
house was crammed to the utmost, and the audience
very respectable. The first Act went off rather
heavily, but the play gained as it proceeded, and
in spite of a most miserable c cast of characters,'
it must be considered a most successful production.
The applause at its termination was prodigious,
and lasted for something like twenty minutes, mingled
with the most vociferous cries for the author, who,
however, did not appear."

" Last night (Feb. 3, 1838) Mr Browning, senior,
came here. He is a very pleasant and quiet man,
and Mr Dow made him sit down with pencil in hand
and produce a little off-hand sketch of Baby. In
three or four minutes he produced a very striking
likeness."

He had some acquaintance with Maeready, saw
him in " Virginius " and found it " a perfect master-
piece of acting, and far too much for my sensibilities."
" You will be sorry to hear that on Friday night
(April 1836) Mr Maeready was greatly irritated by
the conduct of Mr Bunn, the rascally manager of
Drury Lane, and was tempted to give Mr Bunn a
very complete and merited thrashing. ... Mr
Dow was there at the time." The " Poet " Bunn
and the readily irritated tragedian must have made
a fine scene.

About this time he attended lectures on Animal
Magnetism by Baron Dupotet and was moved

BIOGRAPHY 33

to repeat some of the experiments upon his boy.
" Last night, as Mr Hewitt and I were sitting together,
I called Henry in. He had never heard of the
startling effects, and did not know what I was
doing. After an operation of about five minutes,
during the whole of which time he was laughing to
himself at the absurd looking manipulations, his head
suddenly declined, and he was quite asleep ! I
had difficulty in wakening him. Here there could
be no fancy, and he is a remarkably wakeful boy."
" On Wednesday last (April 8, 1839) I went with
Alfred Wornum to see Dr Elliotson's mesmeric
experiments at the Dr's own house. The meeting
was held in the drawing-room. . . . The Countess
of Blessington came, and sat down quite close to
me during some of the time. The things shown
were truly wonderful. Let any sceptic go there,
and if he be not shaken in his disbelief, the
scepticism belongs to the will and not to the
intellect."

He attended also a course of lectures by Thomas
Carlyle in the summer of 1838. The two men
were acquainted, possibly by Wilkinson writing
to him his appreciation of this course of lectures.
Three letters only from Carlyle were found among
Dr Wilkinson's papers, but of these the two later
indicate some intimacy.

84 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

<

"5 CHEYNE Row, CHELSEA,
"August 2nd 1838.

" DEAR SIR, Accept my best thanks for your
gift of Em. Swedenborg's work, and for the kind
sentiments you entertain towards me. That an
earnest fellow-man recognizes an earnest meaning
in us, and with brotherly heart wishes us success
in our special course of endeavour : this is a true
benefit, one of the truest and purest we can receive
in this world. Alas, each man, enveloped in his
own peculiarities and confused tortuosities, is in
great part hidden from all men : seen only of the
maker of men ! It is much if we can discern, here
and there, darkly as thro' tumults and vapour,
that here also is a brother struggling whither we
struggle ; and call to him from the distance, ' Good
speed to thee also ! '

" Hitherto I have known nearly nothing of Sweden-
borg ; or indeed I might say less than nothing, having
been wont to picture him as an amiable but inane
visionary, with affections quite out of proportion
to his insight ; from whom nothing was to be learned.
It is so we judge of extraordinary men. But I
have been rebuked already : a little book by one
Sampson Reed, of Boston in New England, which
some friend sent hither, taught me that a Sweden -
borgian might have thoughts of the calmest sort
on the deepest things, that in short I did not

BIOGRAPHY 35

know Swedenborg, and ought to be ready to
know him.

" I hope to find due leisure for studying this Book
of yours before many days. I engage to read it
with my best attention. Meanwhile, soliciting a
continuance of your good will, I remain, dear Sir,
yours with thanks, T. CARLYLE."

The following long quotation in a letter to his
fiancee from Garth Wilkinson is dated October
3, 1839 :

" You may recollect that I sent a small packet
to our friend Carlyle, containing * Blake,' my trans-
lation of the 'Last Judgment,' Sampson Reed etc.
On Saturday night, quite contrary to all my expecta-
tions, I received such a very kind brotherly letter
from him ! You will be pleased to see it. I have
only copied what he says of Swedenborg. He
speaks of me and my presents then of Blake's
4 Songs ' and Preface then he says :

" ' The book of Swedenborg's which you have
translated anew, I read carefully in the old version
received from you long ago. The impression it
left was, and is, very strange. In his feeling about
the moral essence of things, properly the core of his
own being, I almost altogether and even emphatic-
ally agreed with him. It was clear, too, that he
was a man of robust, nay, you would have said,
cold, hard, practical-looking understanding : how

36 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

such a man should have shaped for himself, into
quiet historical concretions, standing there palpable,
visible, solid and composed as the mountain rocks
or more so, spiritual objects which eye hath not
seen nor ear heard ; this is what I cannot at all
put together. I have looked into all the lives
of Swedenborg that my Biographical Dictionaries
would yield me ; but with little help there. I ought
to admit that this is one of the most wondrous
men ; whom / cannot altogether undertake to
interpret for myself ! I can love and honour
such a man, and leave the mystery of him
mysterious.'

" That good may go with you on the good path
you travel so prays heartily, my dear Sir, yours
always, T. CARLYLE."

It will be convenient to deal here with the rest
of this acquaintance, though the following notes
are of a far later date than the time with which
we are now dealing. No doubt the second European
visit of their common friend, Mr Emerson, had drawn
the two men nearer together.

The first note is to decline an invitation to
the wedding of Garth Wilkinson's eldest daughter
Emma to Lieutenant Hermann Pertz. It is
interesting as showing Carlyle's struggle through
the three last volumes of his " Frederick the
Great."

BIOGRAPHY 37

" June 6tk, 1859.

" MY DEAR SIR, I am sorry to be cut off from
attending you on this pleasant occasion. We are
too weak here (especially the poor wife), and too
busy (especially the other party, who is like to be
swallowed and extinguished altogether with a job
too heavy for him, and too hideous) too weak and
busy for going out at all, for many months past,
even under the handiest circumstances.

" I pray you offer my respects and congratulations
to all the parties, old and young, concerned in this
glad business, and believe me, yours sincerely,

T. CARLYLE."

In the last note preserved (dated November 10,
1863) the struggle continues : it has visibly affected
the handwriting and induced abbreviations.

" DEAR WILKINSON, The Photograph is excell fc
very like ; and I am greatly obliged to you for it.
We have put it into the brother compartment
in the general Galaxy of friendly Faces ; and from
time to time it will turn up as a memento, or be
sought for as such, bringing nothing but pleasant
thoughts with it.

"As to the Chelsea Photographs you speak of, I
am far too busy to spare even an hour for such
operations at pres* : but surely in not many months

38 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

now my doleful Prussian (ultra - Babylonish)
Captivity will end ; after wh h , if permitted,
how happy shall I be to remember y r flattering
suggestion !

" Wish, for my sake, it may be soon. Yours always
truly, T. CARLYLE."

In March 1839, Garth Wilkinson had a serious
illness which laid him by for some weeks and this
was followed by a convalescence at Hampstead.
Later in the same year one of his sisters living with
him had small-pox : when it is interesting to notice
that the young householder lost no time in obtaining
lymph and vaccinating all the inmates and himself.
His fierce opposition to the process and its enforce-
ment was a growth of later date.

During these years of early practice, or rather
of waiting for practice and matrimony, impatience
was excusable. The young people even exerted
themselves, and tried to stir up influence, to obtain
an appointment as Veterinary Surgeon in India.
Fortunately Garth Wilkinson's uncle, Mr Sewell,
head of the Veterinary College, had a hatred of
nepotism and declined to move in the matter.

Mr Gaskell, a relative, was part proprietor of
the Weekly True Son and it seems likely that a
proposal was made that Wilkinson should become
a contributor and that the proposal was embraced,
though nothing of his writing has been traced there.

BIOGRAPHY 39

He projected an article on Swedenborg for the
Westminster Review ; but the idea stood over for
the time, though it was not abandoned : for in 184&
he wrote the article " A sketch of Swedenborg and
the Swedenborgians," for the " Penny Cyclopaedia,"
which was reprinted as a booklet, and was doubtless
the nucleus of his " Emanuel Swedenborg, a bio-
graphy " published in 1849 and issued in a second
amended edition in 1886.

The long time of waiting came to an end, and
John James Garth Wilkinson was married to
Emma Anne Marsh on January 4, 1840. Their
income was small ; their prosperity depended,
humanly speaking, on their own exertions. But
they were a couple who were ready to leave a large
margin to faith. He, indeed, was not careful to
be " too thoroughly justified " by worldly posses-
sions in this momentous step ! They repaired
straight from the church to their little house in Store
Street, and began at once the homely unpretentious
life which they designed to continue.

Let it be said at once that Garth Wilkinson
was highly and deeply blessed in his married life.
Destined never to be rich, he gained a wife whose
deep fund of contentment and housewifely com-
petence would have gilded means narrower than
theirs. Eclectic and independent in the unpopular
causes which he espoused, he found a mate who
could trust the wisdom and sincerity of his aims ;

40 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

she could, moreover, understand and share them :
subject as he was to those misgivings and apprehen-
sions which at times beset the most enthusiastic,
she brought an innate serenity of temperament
into the partnership. They held together the
highest principles, their qualities and powers were
largely complementary. How far she made possible
the tale of work which stands to his name, he and
she alone knew ; and it was her constant aim to
conceal her share in it. They remained, and
doubtless still remain, true lovers.

We must not dwell on this subject at length ;
but any account of Garth Wilkinson's life which
did not acknowledge a debt, both in happiness and
achievement, to his wife would be incomplete.

The visible fruit of this union was three daughters
and a son ; we shall meet with allusions to them from
time to time.

Garth Wilkinson's standing task after, as before,
his marriage was the translation of the " Regnum
Animale," but he found time for occasional articles
for the Monthly Magazine, then edited by his friend
Mr John A. Herraud. In November, 1840, he
contributed a long and reasoned review of the
whole subject of mesmerism, with which we deal
later (see page 74). In May 1841, he collaborated
with the editor in an article upon Emanuel Sweden-
borg, the first of three popular biographical accounts
in which he was to be concerned. In the course

BIOGRAPHY 41

of the same year he contributed a criticism of certain
manuscript notes by S. T. Coleridge, found by Mr
Tulk in a copy of Swedenborg's " (Economia Regni
Animalis." The writer points out that Coleridge's
comments were intelligible to a large body of students,
while the subjects of them belonged to an unknown
system, and were placed at an unfair disadvantage
by isolation from their contexts : he shows that
the critic read only the last fifth of the book and that
his annotations were written passim, and not upon a
calm consideration of all that he did read. Coleridge,
in his " inordinate lust of annotations," was as
it were, talking to himself as he read, and he was
used rather hardly in being himself criticized keenly
but politely : but the occurrence gave an opening
for Garth Wilkinson to champion and explain his
master, such an opening as he was not likely either
then, or later, to pass by.

One of these articles caught the eye and at-
tracted the admiration of Mr Henry James, editor
of a Fourierist newspaper, The Harbinger of New
York, himself a polished writer upon theological
and metaphysical subjects, the father of Pro-
fessor William James and of Mr Henry James,
the well-known writers of to-day. Notice led to
acquaintance, and acquaintance ripened into in-
timate friendship. For many years the two men
corresponded regularly, copiously and affectionately.
The letters from London to New York have been

42 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

carefully preserved, and give us a journal of the
intellectual occupations of the writer : those from
New York to London have been unfortunately
with few exceptions destroyed.

The new friend proved practically helpful as well
as intellectually suggestive and sustaining. Either
he or his wife, a woman whose modest charm of
manner and personal beauty made her everywhere
remarkable, dropped the seed which led Garth
Wilkinson to embrace homoepathy. This, as we
have already seen, reconciled him to the practice
of his profession, though it alienated him in great
measure from the bulk of his brother practitioners.
The new friend threw the columns of his own paper
pen to a writer who had yet to make a name ; he
named him, when an English writer was wanted, as
weekly correspondent for the New York Tribune,
another journal of Fourierist tendencies, founded
by Horace Greely and edited by George Ripley,
who remained a life-long friend to Wilkinson. He
introduced him to the leading Americans who
visited England ; Emerson, Longfellow, Dana,
Hawthorne and many others were friends whom
Garth Wilkinson owed primarily to Mr James'
influence. But, more than this, he initiated and
fostered the acceptance and good repute of Wilkin-
son's work amongst the numerous adherents of
the New Church in the United States. There, even
more than here, the English interpreter of Sweden-

BIOGRAPHY 43

borg was widely and carefully read : and when,
in 1869, he took a long contemplated but swiftly
performed tour in America, he found his own name
a passport to recognition and hospitality wherever
he laid his foot.

The following extracts from a letter to one of his
sisters (August 11, 1840), the only one of this period
which has survived, gives some idea of his activities.
After apologies for delay, he says " In the first place
I have been busy for some weeks ; that is, relatively
busy ; so that I have not been able, on many days,
to apply myself to my translation, which you know
generally goes on athwart almost everything. Then,
in the next, I have been occupied rather more than
was agreeable in writing and supervising the publica-
tion of the Report of the Printing Society ; which,
however, is happily now out. . . . On Sunday week
I was invited to Dr Elliotson's, to meet the
Reverend Channey Hare Townshend, and to
see some mesmeric experiments. . . . Amongst
them (the guests) were Mr Tulk, Mr Townshend,
Mr Dickens (Boz), Jack Forster and about 8
others. . . . Our life, though not a very uncom-
fortable (!), is a very unvaried one. Mine consists
almost entirely in seeing what patients I have to see,
and in writing two quarto pages per diem, winding
up the day, now and then, by a call from a friend."

Garth Wilkinson had joined the Swedenborgian
Society soon after he began the study of the writings,

44 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

and it naturally was not long before he became a
prominent member. He was on the Printing Com-
mittee which was engaged in bringing out a uniform
edition of all the " Works " : there was some differ-
ence of opinion on the importance of this matter,
and letters of an earlier date give a lively account
of party politics in the Society. The Wilkinsons,
for Garth was seconded by his brother William, now
a rising solicitor, appear to have had at least a fair
share of the direction. Wilkinson, as we shall see,
was little in sympathy with the sectarian side of
Swedenborgianism. He was concerned rather with
the spiritual and intellectual side of the matter,
and, in general, where essentials were not involved,
gave his time to interpreting and translating the works.
His translation of the " Regnum Animale " was
duly published in 1843, prefaced by a long and care-
fully written introduction. He demonstrates the
scientific value of Swedenborg's work and presses
his claims for recognition upon the scientists of
the day. Incidentally he gives a disquisition upon
the earlier anatomists, to show how fully his author
was abreast of, or even ahead of, contemporary
knowledge. Such an excursus argues special study.
It is, indeed, evident that at this period of his life,
Wilkinson was storing his mind with that vast
knowledge which later showed itself in copious
careless allusion in his published writings, his letters
and his conversation.

BIOGRAPHY 45

He signalized the completion of this task by the
first real holiday which he had taken since he began
practice. In September 1843 he visited Brussels,
Antwerp, Amsterdam and Leyden, seeing much
that was new to him on his first Continental trip,
and enjoying himself vastly ; though with many
a backward look to his wife and children at home.

After this brief interlude, he set himself down to
the translation of the " (Economia Regni Animalis."
Nominally he was acting as editor of a translation
formerly made by his friend the Reverend A.
Clissold, but the labour which he expended upon
it amounted to a re-translation. This, too, was
prefaced by a long and thoughtful Introduction.
But during the course of this, the second of
Wilkinson's " monumental " translations, he found
time to deliver a lecture on " The Grouping of
Animals."

" Yesterday 1 1 thought of you and your New York
Lectures and your anticipatory trepidation ; for
last night I gave the first lecture I ever delivered ;
and not without pain. It was before the Veterinary
Medical Association, by request of that body. The
audience was considerable, and comprised several
scientific men of good repute, among the rest,
Erasmus Wilson, the author of a good book on
Anatomy. I chose for my subject the Grouping
of Animals according to the Doctrine of Use, as

1 Letter to Mr Henry J. James, May 17, 1845.

46 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

contradistinguished from the classification according
to the race of external resemblances or uniformity ;
and aimed to show that the Domestic Animals
were the head of the Zoological scale, in opposition
to the monkeys. I flung out at the latter beasts,
and the beastly hypotheses connecting them with
man, with as much directness as I could : and
did not mince the matter that science itself is but
a servant, and must not be tolerated out of its
place. The thing was well received, and will be
published by and by."

Other works which marked this busy period
were the writing of " Remarks on Swedenborg's
4 Economy of the Animal Kingdom,' " 1846, some
criticism of the big work which he had last trans-
lated ; an edition of Swedenborg's " Opuscula "
in their original Latin, 1846, followed the next year
by a translation of the same entitled " Posthumous
Tracts now first translated from the Latin of Emanuel
Swedenborg " ; a translation of "A Hieroglyphic
Key to natural and spiritual mysteries by way
of representations and correspondences " by the
same author, 1847 ; an edition of Swedenborg's
" (Economia Regni Animalis," in its original Latin,
1847 ; a translation of Swedenborg's " Prodromus
Philosophic Ratiocinantis de Infinito," under the
title " Outlines of a Philosophical Argument on
the Infinite, and the Final Cause of Creation, and
on the Intercourse between the Soul and the Body,'*

BIOGRAPHY 47

1847; and "a Popular Sketch of Swedenborg's
Philosophical Works" 1847. In 1847 he also
delivered a lecture upon Swedenborg's scientific
works before the Swedenborgian Association, and
published it under the title of " Science for All."

Only those who have carried through literary
undertakings can recognize how much of labour
such a catalogue represents. Let it be remembered,
too, that many of these works were designed to take,
and succeeded in taking, a place among the classics
of an intellectual and critical body.

Garth Wilkinson was largely concerned in the
foundation of the Swedenborgian Association, being
a member of the Provisional Council and also of a
small sub -committee for preparing a draft Constitu-
tion and Bye-laws. He also at this time contributed
a review of Clissold's " Principia " to the " New
Church Advocate." " The line of thought rudely
indicated in that article " he writes to a friend,
44 is at present running in my head, and I design,
God willing, to follow it out at greater length here-
after, probably in papers or lectures for the Sweden-
borgian Association."

It is clear that at this time, not only was Wilkin-
son willing to undertake hard work, but also that
every piece of work which he did opened up vistas
of consequent labours, and that he was anxious
to follow them all. He was, in fact, at this time
working extremely hard ; riot, indeed, without

48 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

receiving great appreciation from those whose praise
was dear ; but without anything like proportionate
contributions towards the support of his home.
The increase of his practice was slow. And this is
not surprising to those who know how much of his
thought and energy were being expended in quite
extra-professional channels.

Among other plans which he entertained for the
improvement of his condition was that of emigrating
to America. This idea dated back as far as his
acquaintance with Mr James, who was greatly in
its favour. Inquiries were pushed on both sides
of the Atlantic, but they ended in a recognition
that the step was one of grave uncertainty, and
the cherished thought was laid aside. " When
my labours above mentioned (the translation of the
* Economy of the Animal Kingdom ') are concluded,"
he writes to Mr James, at the end of 1844, " I shall
think very seriously of America. We both wish
to go to your country, both for the sake of our
family, and in order that we may have a freer sphere
of action : and if I had any certainty to go to,
(which, I suppose, is impossible) I should not be
long in deciding. ... I entreat, however, that you
will from time to time give us a hint on this subject
of emigration, which is one that we shall not cease
to keep before us."

A year and a half later, he refers to the subject,
writing to the same friend :

BIOGRAPHY 49

" I tell you plainly that if I were placed in any
responsible and satisfying position, by any joint
effort on the part of the admirers of Swedenborg
in America, the best of my mind and life should be
devoted to their service. . . . There is not, to
my knowledge, a thing under the moon that I
would rather choose to be connected with, were
it c fancy's sketch ' that I were outlining. A small
fixed income at any rate for a period ; a cottage
out of New York, where my labours might mainly
be carried on ; for, between ourselves, I am so
sick of this tourbillon of a city, and of all cities, that
it would be a blessing to me to live for a few years
rather further out than suburbs : labours connected
with the literature and philosophy of Swedenborg :
and association with those who sympathize with
my pursuits ; for I have no such association here ;
no, not a single voice to say, go on. . . . All
these conditions fill up something which I should,
nay do, desire with might and main ; and which,
if it be right, I do not doubt of attaining."

The freedom and diversity of the American people
and conditions were a constant tractor to him,
during these years. His foresight in the following
extract from a letter, has been abundantly justified.

" Your futurity promises to be great beyond
what History has to show in the past ; that is to
say, if your souls are equal to your chances. A
climate ranging from the temperate to the torrid

50 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

zone, and peopled by the genera of all civilized, and
nearly all uncivilized, mankind, is a composition
of circumstances which, when united to the fact
that the whole rest of the world calls upon you
to be useful to them, must give you wealth and
variety to a surprising degree. It sometimes seems
to me that it would be no pusillanimous flight from
my poor position here, to go to help on with my
feeble arm the youthful pursuits of a nation destined
to be so provisive for old England, as well as for
the entire world."

But in May, 1849, the advices of Mr James, cor-
roborated by those of another American friend,
finally determined all hopes and anticipations of an
emigrational nature.

In following briefly this part of Wilkinson's
correspondence with Mr James we have left un-
recorded certain matters of varying importance.

In 1847, it was found that the better part of
the doctor's patients lived in and around Hampstead.
He therefore sold the remainder of his lease of 13
Store Street and followed them thither, settling
in more congenial quarters, at 25 Church Row a
neighbourhood much more definitely suburban then
than now, but his residence there was not to be
a long one.

In 1848, Ralph Waldo Emerson paid his second
visit to Europe and brought with him an introduction
to Garth Wilkinson in the handwriting of Mr James.

BIOGRAPHY 51

The two men were already known to each other by
their works, and they were not slow in forming a
warm and stable friendship. Emerson was already
well read in Swedenborg and this new acquaintance
increased his interest in the writings : it would
be interesting to know how far the lecture upon
"" Swedenborg, or the Mystic " was completed when
Emerson arrived in England, how much was added
and what modifications it underwent, during his
stay here.

Mrs Wilkinson was away from home during
Emerson's visit to London, a fact to which we owe
some letters mentioning meetings with him.

" I am going to spend the evening with Dr
Carpenter," he writes on April 4, 1848, " to meet
Emerson, where I shall also see Daniel Morell and
other friends. I find Emerson has been speaking
warmly of me."

On April 10, he records : " Our party came off
last night, and altho' everyone said they felt so
strange at the absence of Mrs Wilkinson, and Mr
Emerson particularly regretted it, as ' he had counted
upon seeing you,' yet we made the best of it, and
shone away as fiercely as we could, like despairing
stars when the moon is out. I went in the gig for
Emerson at half past 3, and brought him up to
Williams', where we sat and chatted and walked
round the farm ; then walked to the Heath by the
fields, and enjoyed a most friendly and interesting

52 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

chat. . . . Emerson delighted me and everybody.
I must say, he grows upon my regard exceedingly."

On the 17th he dined with friends and met Emerson
and Crabb Robinson. " The said Crabb Robinson
is one of the most entertaining and interesting old
gentlemen I ever met. He is one of the Council
of University College, an old friend of Mr Tulk's
and one of the executors of Flaxman. He knew
Blake well. After tea, he singled me out by miracle,
and entertained me beyond measure about the
great artist. It was he who gave Blake 5 guineas
for the ' Songs of Innocence.' He warmly invited
me to call upon him, when he will show me several
of Blake's originals, both poems and pictures."

Emerson has been called " the sanest of the
Transcendentalists " but he was distinctly a dis-
tinguished and discriminating Trans cendentalist ;
and everybody who has considered transcendentalism
is prepared to recognize Garth Wilkinson as a member
of the same brotherhood. Emerson at all events
recognized him at sight, and, as we shall shortly see,
was ready to help him, not only with valuable literary
encomium, but also with personal recommendations
as a lecturer. It is not too much to say that his
influence at a critical time was a predominant
factor in gaining for his friend a literary, social
and professional recognition which he then greatly
needed and which he thereafter constantly justified
and improved. Emerson gave the " word in season "

BIOGRAPHY 53

which was wanted : Wilkinson had the power to
seize the forelock of opportunity.

Wendell Holmes, in his interesting but unsatisfy-
ing biography of Emerson, names " two notable
products of the intellectual ferment of the Tran-
scendental period " ; The Dial periodical and Brook
Farm. Wilkinson's literary work and ideals were
closely parallel to those of The Dial, though he
was never a contributor to that paper. He was
now to give his mind to the " true begetter "
of the Brook Farm ideal. In America, Brook
Farm, begun enthusiastically upon lines even less
definite, developed into a determined attempt to
carry out the idea of Fourier in a working
"Phalanstery." An experiment of six years (1841-
1847) ended to all intent in the destruction of
the settlement by fire. Like all the contemporary
efforts to realize Fourier's ideals, it was a failure.

Fourier, who was born in 1772 and died in 1837,
has shared the fate of many idealists. His purely
abstract views of human nature and social possi-
bilities have hindered the acceptance of certain
excellent and concrete proposals for the benefit
of society. He lived before the world was ready
for him ; his Socialistic message contained some
glaring fallacies and many wild words : his immediate
followers " eat the air, promise- crammed " ; he
himself died the lonely death of a pioneer. His
name is unfamiliar alike to the small shareholder

54 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

in the Co-operative Stores and to the member of Trade
Unions, both of whom taste the fruit of his labours,
now that the tree has been pruned out of recognition
and adapted to " common or garden " culture.

There was some pressure upon Wilkinson to be-
come a Fourierist. Social problems never seemed
more urgent for solution than they did at this time ;
when the power of aristocracy had waned, only to
be succeeded by the power of a dominant middle
class. Speculation and theory were busy among the
Intuitionists ; the strength of the Utilitarians had
not yet shown itself. It was a fit time for doctrines
such as those of Fourier, St Simon and Owen to
gain adherents. Moreover, Mr James' paper, The
H&rbinger, was the quasi-official organ of Brook
Farm : Emerson was keenly sympathetic to the
movement, though he was never a Brook-farmer
himself. It was likely that Wilkinson should examine
Fourier for himself . We can trace the result in his
correspondence, though it is scarcely necessary that
this should always be quoted at length.

At first Fourier definitely repelled his student,
who found his writings arrogant, pugnacious, given
to petitio principii, impudent. The man himself
appeared to be without a central religious faith :
lacking this, he fails of his intended function as a
great scientist : having it, his powerful perception
of the universal mathematics of the sciences might
have raised him high indeed : his experience is small

BIOGRAPHY 55

in quantity and poor in quality : and Doctrine
without experience is useless. Six months later
(August 1846) we find the note changing, and the
reason for the change is given to us. Dr Hugh
Doherty " is marrying Fourier to the New Church,
giving the former, however, the masculine character
in the compact." Fourier's analysis of the tv^!vo
' 73 assions seems eminently valuable as leading direct
to the organization of the Sciences." A few months
later the process of conversion is clearly going on.
In June 1, 1847, Wilkinson finds it natural that
Fourierism should attract attention in America,
" for the whole thing is jolly human " ; moreover
the Fourierists have a more tangible belief in im-
mortality and in the interdependence of the spiritual
and natural worlds than any body of people except
the Swedenborgians. Six weeks later he writes
" All you say of the Association movement I echo
from my heart. It is the morning brightness of the
world's day." He is reviewing a book by his friend
John Morell which deals with the subject, and will
procure a copy for The Harbinger.

An extract from a letter written to Mr James
on October 1, 1847, will show how fully Fourier
had by that time found himself a place as at least
an accessory to Swedenborg in Wilkinson's con-
sideration " What I have at present on the stocks
for you is a paper on Correspondences, which I
trust ^vill be finished before the middle of this month,

56 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

and sent, if possible, by the steamer of the 19th.
It will treat the subject as a branch of the movement,
and not sink it in the mere laudation of Swedenborg.
First, I attempt to show that the doctrine, as a
general idea, is common to all men upon the least
thought : Secondly, that the working out of the
Doctrine supposes a vast science, and not a set of
guesses arising from preconceived ideas : Thirdly,
that in the happier times, this science will be the
crown of the sciences, from its intensely practical
character ; because correspondence is the circum-
stance which draws down the spiritual world into
nature, and engenders Creations according to the
disposition of the lower world. I am not without
hopes that the Paper may be useful, and prepare
some to carry forward the views of Swedenborg
and Fourier, instead of being, as heretofore, the
mere turnspits of those central fires."

On February 11, 1848, Wilkinson writes to Mr
James to sympathize with him under an attack
by The Boston Magazine upon an article which had
evidently associated " those central fires." He is
not surprised, since the standpoint is not easily
grasped, and also because he ventures to doubt
whether Mr James had himself sufficiently formulated
his position as mediator between the Truths of
Swedenborg and the Truths of Fourier. He himself
is of opinion that the mission of Fourier had better
be worked out for some time to come, say for a

BIOGRAPHY 57

quarter of a century, on its own grounds, separately
from dogmatic theology. When the theologians
see Fourierism at work, if it does work, they will
not dare to despise or denounce it. He is not
confident that the time for Association has yet come.

This temporizing attitude was fully justified
by experience. Swedenborgianism has had quite
enough to do without dragging the extravagances
of Fourier behind it. It must not be forgotten,
either, that Fourier's doctrine, as crudely stated
by him, contemplated a period in which the natural
passions would play unbridled. This stage, which
would clearly have made practical adherents of
the doctrine unwelcome in every civilized community,
was wisely regarded as unnecessary at Brook Farm,
and was generally ignored. Union with a system,
which, even in theory, could be connoted with
" Free Love " was impossible for any Christian
Church.

Writing to Mr Emerson to bespeak his kindly
consideration for the Reverend J. R. MorelTs trans-
lation of Fourier " On the Soul " (a work, by the
way, in which he himself had given more than
occasional help) Wilkinson says " I look upon
Fourier as the first worthy historian of the Animal
Man," an expression which epitomises the results
of his Fourieristic studies sufficiently well. We
may date back to these studies some of the fierceness
with which he attacked everything which bore the

58 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

semblance of undue State interference with the
individual. Compulsory Vaccination, the Contagious
Diseases Act, state qualifications in medicine, pro-
bably owe some of the sting in his lash to the
intense individualism which Fourier fostered.

Ordinary holiday travel is apt to lose its salt
in transcription; but there were conditions which
make Dr Wilkinson's first visit to Paris in 1848,
interesting, even to-day. In England, either by
good luck or good management, the Chartist rising
had not culminated in revolution : but there was
a general uneasy feeling that it was only the first
wave of a storm which had broken. There was
trouble throughout Europe. The wave of demo-
cratic action swept over nearly every government,
and nowhere more suddenly or fiercely than in
France. As he himself wrote on his return 1 :

" That visit is still engraven on me, and comes
out in dream and reverie with singular vividness.
Nothing would be more profitable to me than to
travel over Europe just now : Volcanic countries
present the most striking as well as often beautiful
pictures, and pictures are the skins and costumes
of the soul. But really in England too we may
likely have movement soon ; the hush and ex-
cessive triviality of politics, the silence so deep that
fine sounds are heard upon it, betoken a coming
storm. All the cattle, too, are flying to shelter,

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, New York, July 28, 1848.

BIOGRAPHY 59

tinder those large old trees which may first call down
the lightning. Their very instincts are wrong at
such a time. In a word, England too is profoundly
sub -volcanic. The finest vineyards are growing
upon it, within a few feet, and even in consequence
of, the terranean sulphor."

When it was possible almost to hear the storm
sing in the wind around the house, the sight of a
neighbour actually suffering it was absorbing in
interest. His brother William had just returned
from a visit to Paris, full of what he had seen and
heard. Garth felt that he could not remain at
home, while such sights and sounds were within
reach. With several friends, he started for Paris
about June 2nd and joined his old friend Dr Doherty
and Lord Wallscourt. A letter dated June 25th
tells of his being in the centre of what was going on :

" Here we are, much tired, but quite safe and well :
we arrived at this place through sundry obstacles,
but none really serious. It is a splendid city,
but a day of horrors. Yesterday, by cannonad-
ing and musketry no less than 25,000 souls
perished : nothing like it since the last Revolution,
or since the Massacre of St Bartholomew. Two
thousand men of the working class were butchered
in the vaults of the Pantheon, which was ankle-
deep in it. The Musketry has not ceased all night,
and it v is interrupted every now and then by heavy
Artillery. But we are, I assure you, perfectly safe

60 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

and I would not have missed the events for the
world. They are historical. You can have no
idea of them."

Later he wrote :

'' The fusillade and cannonade lasted all yesterday,
and as I was philosophically reading Doherty on
the Series this morning, about half past two (I had
waked up for an hour), the coups de canon recom-
menced, and that and the musketry kept up very
audibly at intervals till this morning. Now I
understand that the greater part of the Barricades
have been taken, excepting those of the Faubourg
St Antoine where the troopers have not yet been
able to penetrate. . . . We have been walking
about near the Tuileries and Louvre, watching
the forests of bayonets as they stream towards
the Faubourg St Antoine, where the rough work
is to be done. . . . The Churches are full of the
dead, and all the women are sitting at the doors,
making charpie for the wounded. Every now and
then we see them being brought into the Ambulances.
The whole is a scene of Devilry on a magnificent
scale, as I can never hope to see again. ... As to
my personal adventures, I shall probably write and
tell you them when we return. They have been
amusing enough, but you could scarcely understand
them without a commmentary. Be assured, however,
that they belong to Comedy, not Tragedy. . . .
You can have no idea of what French pluck is :

BIOGRAPHY 61

it is all, and more than all, of what Irish talk is :
and that is a good deal. In fact there are in Paris
hundreds of thousands who dare to die at any
moment. To see them is to me a lesson in human
nature. I did not know that there were such
spiritual beings, such ready-made ghosts. They
brave death because they are already spirits to the
finger ends, and their steel is immortal. There
are in Paris about 500,000 men under arms and
fresh troops are pouring in from the country
every hour. Only imagine the spectacle presented
in every street, alive as it is with red cloth, glitter-
ing / 'mils and bayonets. But it is a sight that I
hardly wish you to see."

" The insurrection is crushed. . . . The streets
are becoming more free, and last night Doherty
and I perambulated the Quays, to see the moving
life. The troops passed us, flushed with the affair
of the Faubourg St Antoine. . . . The cruellest
thing of all was the Government putting forward
the poor little Gardes Mobiles into the thick of the
battle, to fight against their brother ouvriers. An
officer told us last night, that out of one battalion
of a thousand, but fifty men were left in service."

" The prisoners are now being brought in, escorted
by masses of bayonets. Many are lads with fine
intelligent faces : they have their hands tied behind
their backs, and march in the midst of the troops
with a sad, heroic air. It is one of the most melan-

62 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

choly sights that the world presents ; intelligent,
brave hunger, compressed and crushed by the
bayonets of the upper Classes."

" I send you Wallscourt's letter just received.
He, like ourselves, has heard the whizz of iron near his
precious head. It is an exciting siffle, but only alarm-
ing when you are about three hundred miles off it."

" So ends the first skirmish between Socialism
and the old civilization. . . . Judging the beginning
of Socialism by the beginning of Liberal Politics,
how vast is the preponderance of force in favour
of the former ! "

" We have seen the battle streets, and instructed
ourselves thereby . . . and seen a sight for a life-
time : all the appearance of a city taken by storm.
. . . But, after all, the most memorable part was
the fierce imprint left by the fight. Barricades
everywhere, and the houses riddled and smashed
and crushed with hail of musketry and deadly
strokes of cannon. You can't conceive it. On
one house 14 feet square the indefatigable Phillips
counted 482 musketry hits and 9 cannon shots.
. . We took a cab and drove to other in-
teresting things of the moment. First we saw
the funeral of General Negrier, whose remains
were borne in a rich car, ornamented with
spears and tricolours. But the best sight of the
day was the Archbishop of Paris. Noble fellow !
there he lay, in his palace, in his room of state,

BIOGRAPHY 63

hung with sables, adorned with his insignia, and
reclining upon a sloping couch, for all the world
like a good spirit sleeping till to-morrow's work.
Really, the French are great Cooks ; and whether
it is a Procession, or an ovation, or a chop, or a
tadavre, they get it up, and engraft upon it a second
nature of beauty and refinement, in a style quite
striking for me. Death has none of his terrors
when they polish him off ! "

" Paris is illuminated every night, in order to make
the streets as light as possible and prevent a certain
system of popping which goes on when we are abed,
after 11 o'clock : before that hour the daily shooting
season has not commenced; but, after that, the
sentinels are fair game, and we may (if not asleep)
hear the crying out all night with admirable dis-
tinctness. Gardez lien a vous ; the vous very
loud. . . . No passage during the night is allowed
near or behind them, but all must keep the mid
road. . . . There goes the everlasting rappel and
the measured tread, past the Tuileries."

44 What I have seen convinces me of this. The
Parisians care no more about life than we do about
a few coppers, and they are not susceptible of fear
for any length of time, but it will be converted
into untamable rage. It is a sad state of things ;
but Providence is over all, working out His great
designs of Peace through the passions of hostile
nations, and making their wrath praise Him."

64 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

" We have just seen the Funeral Pomp of the
Victims of June. . . . 'Twas a grand military
spectacle, an immense piece of Cookery."

There were naturally other and more normal
sights in a first visit to Paris. Enghien, Montmorenci
and Versailles, the sewage works at Montfaucon,
the Abattoir and so forth were visited. But from
the account of such doings we will cull only one
extract as recalling an almost forgotten name,
that of Robert Owen, the successful cotton-spinner
who later nigh upon beggared himself as an ex-
perimental Socialist, the founder of Communities
at New Lanark^ Ratahine and Tytherly. He died
ten years later, but too early to see many of his
ideas developed in practice.

" Last night we had a curious party ; Brisbane,
Phillips, Daly, Doherty, Dana, Wallscourt and
Robert Owen. Old Owen is lodging in this house ;
he is a nice quiet old citizen of the world, wedded
most amusingly to his circumstances and parallelo-
grams, and, for the rest, putting his conceit aside,
a humble enough specimen of a man. He always
thinks that the morrow is to see Owenism prevalent
over the world, and that all his failures have been
successes. There is something in a man who has
received a life of stripes and still does not know
that he is beaten."

It is evident that as much experience and novelty
as possible was concentrated into a brief holiday

BIOGRAPHY 65

before Garth Wilkinson returned to " England,
home and duty " on the sixth of July.

Practice not satisfying the requirements of his
growing family, and all thought of settling in
America being over, it was necessary that Wilkinson
should supplement his means by some extra-pro-
fessional work. And this suited well with his
propagandist zeal for the doctrines of Swedenborg.
This was a time when, in Brougham's words, " the
schoolmaster was abroad " : philosophy was also
peripatetic. The Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge, and the Mechanics' Institutes
which existed and flourished in almost every town,
testify to a keen thirst for information ; no doubt
the supply and the demand mutually stimulated
each other. Certainly the lecture was a popular
road to knowledge (or, at least, to superficial informa-
tion) about the " thirties," " forties," and " fifties "
of the last century. The man who had anything
to say, or any views to indoctrinate, could not do
better than lecture his fellow- creatures. It was an
avenue to the public ear which Thackeray, Dickens,
Carlyle, and Emerson did not despise ; and there
were, it may safely be said, hundreds of lesser lights
who illuminated their fellows and toured the larger
towns of the country with a course of three or four
lectures in their carpet-bags. The lecturer supplied
the night's entertainment. A diagram or two,
a few specimens, might be provided ; but the magic

6 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

lantern and dissolving views were still unknown.
There was, in fact, such a supply of lecturers that
to find lucrative engagements in the best towns was
not an easy matter; as Garth Wilkinson, having
issued a syllabus for a course of lectures on the
Physics of Human Nature, discovered. But he had
a powerful ally in Mr Emerson, who had ready
admittance to just those audiences which his less-
known friend was anxious to address ; and, wherever
Mr Emerson lectured and elsewhere, there he
dropped a germinal recommendation of Garth
Wilkinson. We find him writing in acknowledge-
ment.

1 " I cannot tell you in the space of a letter how
much your kind word has done for me in England,
and in my own town. For a long time I could not
understand the place which I seemed to occupy in
the good feelings of many worthy and clever persons,
but by slow degrees the truth dawned upon me,
that you had done it all. It is even so, I assure you.
What you may have said, I know not, and I do
not wish to know ; but this I do know, that the
words, whatever they were, gained me a position that
Lhad not before, and which seems to me unmerited
by my deeds. Nay ; the fruits have not been all
opinions ; but many a coin has run into my ex-
chequer from the same stream of your kind expres-
sions. And in a Lecture Tour, I found that you

1 Letter to Mr R. W. Emerson, October 15, 1849.

BIOGRAPHY 67

had everywhere been there also, dropping your
charities from your own unique urn."

With such a powerful endorsement, the syllabus
took more prosperous journeys and was followed
often by the lecturer. His tours included the
Whittington Club (London), Liverpool, Manchester,
Birmingham, Derby, and Leeds. There was only
one accident worthy of record during these journeys.
Mr and Mrs Wilkinson returned from Liverpool
via Sheffield, and stayed there some days with a
friend, Mr Phillips. Driving with him in a pony
carriage, they were about to visit Montgomery
the poet ;not " Satan " Montgomery, whom
Macaulay gibbeted, but James, author of " Pelican
Island " and many hymns) and pulled up at the top
of the hill. The pony bolted down the hill again.
The two gentlemen were thrown out, but Mrs
Wilkinson was carried sixty yards at full gallop.
They were all badly bruised, but were thankful
to escape alive. Garth Wilkinson " escaped almost
unhurt, which I take as a divine sign that I have
work to do yet, and that I am to use my energies
therefor."

The full syllabus of the six lectures on the Physics
of Human Nature, as delivered at the Liverpool
Mechanics' Institute on August 2, 1848, and on
each succeeding Saturday and Wednesday, shows
that they concerned themselves respectively with the
brain, the lungs, the heart, food and assimilation,

68 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

the skin, and the human form. In most places,,
however, the course appears to have consisted of
either three or four lectures. Each lecture was
in reality a demonstration, firstly, in elementary
anatomy and physiology, secondly (and this was the
important point in the lecturer's scheme), in the
doctrine of correspondences : the powder of doctrine
was conveyed in the jam of information. The
line of thought was one which Wilkinson followed
and produced, in more detail and to more purpose,
later, when he wrote " The Human Body and it
Connection with Man."

The reports given by the provincial press make this
fairly evident, though it is amusing to notice how
the true gist of the matter did not always attract
attention.

" On Monday evening last Mr J. J. Garth
Wilkinson delivered a lecture at the Mechanics'
Institute on the Human Brain. Notwithstanding
the extremely unfavourable weather, there was
a numerous attendance. After some prefatory
remarks, the lecturer explained, and illustrated
by means of diagrams, some of the chief features
in the anatomy of the brain. ... Mr Wilkinson
then contended that the animal spirit was formed
in the cortex of the brain, and was impelled thence
through the body by an automatic motion of the brain
itself. He endeavoured to show that the brain
respired at the same intervals with the lungs, but in

BIOGRAPHY 69

a higher atmosphere, and in a more eminent degree.
The manner in which these doctrines were settled
decided the fate not only of physiology, but of
philosophy. If there was no universal body living
in the particular body, mankind had no communion
with the universe, but was limited to solid sensualities.
If there was no spirit in the nerves, man was not
embodied at all, or else he was nothing but body ;
and in either of these cases, the general laws of
nature were fixed hypotheses incapable of proof,
or delusions to be abjured or forgotten. So we
must wander between metaphysics and stupidity,
between idealism and spiritualism, without daring
to look our souls in their natural faces a sad result,
which could only be contravened by a knowledge
and study of an animal spirit existing in the body.
Mr Wilkinson was warmly applauded throughout
and at the conclusion of his lecture, of which the
above is only a slight sketch." Manchester Guardian,
Wednesday, October 11, 1848.

. . . What then was the end in view of the
process of digestion and assimilation ? In one sense,
it was the formation of the blood ; but in a higher
sense, it was that we might live in the world by means
of a body derived from the world, and represent-
ing the world. To be completely men of nature,
we required to be allied to her by our constitution,
to marry into all her royal families, to take a body
from every kingdom, in order that we might enter,

70 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

inhabit, appreciate and understand it. The sense
of taste, and the alimentary series which he had
been considering, afforded us our lowest or material
embodiment, by which we were brought into fellow-
ship with the mineral, vegetable, and animal ; the
sense of smell and the pulmonary series, gave us
our aerial food, by which we gained the freedom
of the atmosphere ; the brain was the governor
of assimilation, realizing for the body all the aethers
and spaces of the mundane system, and introducing
man into all the elements of his being. The highest
organization, as well as the lowest, was omnivorous,
eating the whole universe. The lecturer concluded
by some remarks on the psychology of digestion
and assimilation in nature and society." Manchester
Guardian, Oct. 18, 1848.

" . . . While the action of the lungs in drawing
the venous blood to the heart had been well
canvassed, their action upon the great nerves and
spinal marrow had not been thought of. The
nerves were the most impressible part of the body ;
and what could be the result of the expansion to
which they were constantly subject, but the admission
of a fluid along them large enough to fill the space
created ? And must not this effect, in the same
instant, amount to expansion of all the parts to
which the nerves or fluid were sent viz. to all
the viscera of the frame ? Then the lungs not
only breathed themselves, but caused the body to

BIOGRAPHY 71

breathe with them. In the body there was an
organic attraction, corresponding to that of the
organic world, enabling all the organs to take what
they wanted. These organs, too, were conveniently
placed for this purpose ; those needing the best
blood being so seated at the banquet that they
obtained what they required naturally and neces-
sarily. They were classed in exact rank, each
having its attraction, seconded by its place around
the table. The order which this subject involved,
could it be fully opened, would exceed the most
hopeful conception and beggar the visions of the
poets. If each organ, then, contributed its share
to the ensemble of life, each demanded a special
care in the maintenance of health, which was the
wealth of life. (Here followed some strictures
upon tight lacing.) If motion was the essence
of the life of the organs, all our articles of apparel
might fairly be supervised and limited in their
pressure, in order that our persons might enjoy
their healthful liberty. It was not to be doubted
that in what we wear, equally as in what we are,
grace, pleasure, and beauty are compatible with
freedom, and with freedom only. The lecturer
concluded by some remarks on the universality
of the functions of breathing, or alternation in
nature and society. He was frequently and warmly
applauded throughout the lecture." Derby Mercury,
January 17, 1849.

72 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

Such was the impression which the lectures made
at the reporters' table. What the lecturer felt
meanwhile is told in a letter to Mr Henry James. 1

" As soon as I get back to Hampstead, I will
be less egotistic in my communications, and we will
have a long chat upon our old subjects ; at present
I am so engrossed with my new travellings and
altered mode of life, that I can hardly think of
anything else.

" Everybody tells me that I shall in a little time
have my winter full of lecturing, and become popular
in that line. Certainly I feel in good heart at the
prospect of usefulness which seems opening before
me.

" I am now meditating a course on The Kingdom
of Sleep. ... I shall try to make it interesting
to you, so do not think that I am going into any
old catalogue work or copying from anybody.

" My last lecture (at Liverpool) was coldly received,
but successful for all that. The audience and the
lecturer seemed to me like two stones, trying which
was the hardest ; but I am sure that we parted good
friends, or kind foes, whichever you like. I minced
nothing, and my poor wife told me she shook all
over to hear my strange heterodoxy so audible
in the dead silence."

He wrote again in the same sense to the same
friend (September 15, 1848). After mentioning

1 August 25, 1848.

BIOGRAPHY 73

his existing engagements, he speaks of preparing
other courses of lectures. His attitude is " to see
the subjects all round ; to recognize the omni-
presence of truth ; to believe in the travelling force
of the great streams of God. For this purpose I
despise nothing, but whatever be the subject, I
first take its description, and note its stock ; then
its plain uses ; then the divinity and history of the
knowledge of it ; its representation and appearance
in Mythology and Philosophy ; and what Poetry
has said and still says to it ; then how it occurs
in language, and lastly what is the peculiar view
of it at this day; and, gathering up these several
informations, I next try to see them as forms and
uses ; and conclude by carrying out the thing
through a few of its analogies, in Society, History,
Spirituality. . . . Even with my feeble powers,
I find the method helpful to me, and attractive to
the listeners. And the fields of fact which it opens
are so immense and fruitful that one never thinks
of controversies, but instead of them, one invites
others to better arrangements of the facts ; calling
forth, not criticism, but emulous works."

The projected new courses, as well as a scheme for
publishing those which were actually delivered, in
book form, were never realized ; but his method
is worthy of being recorded, as he clearly followed
it in other manifestations of work.

While he was lecturing in Manchester, Mr Wilkinson

74 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

was introduced to Mr James Braid, and was deeply
interested in his practice of hypnotism. Mr Braid
was not satisfied with the pretensions of magnetism ;
and, on experiment, he found that he could do all
and more than those who followed it, though he
dispensed with all their paraphernalia of magnets
and crystals. Mr Braid's conclusions have long been
generally adopted, but they then had all the charm
of novelty, and, as reaching toward what is now called
the subliminal consciousness, had a special attrac-
tion for Garth Wilkinson. He had already himself
critically examined the claims of Mesmerism in an
extended review for The Monthly Magazine (vol.
iv. No. 23), and had expressed grave doubts of its
utility for the patient, though he regarded it as-
opening up great possibilities in " pyschological
analysis." The new development, and the elimina-
tion of the personal will factor from its processes,
gave him a fresh zest in following out and examining
the phenomena and theories of mental states.

We anticipate a little in giving here an extract
from a letter 1 which illustrates Wilkinson's ex-
pectation of a new " influx " of power to the art
of healing, from another aspect.

" The other evening I met at Mr A. I. Scott's
(the Professor of English Literature at University
College, London) a Mr Dillon Tennant, who represents
a mode of curation novel in these roundabout ages*

1 To Mr H. J. James, April 13, 1849.

BIOGRAPHY 75

He is a person of character and standing, and may
be relied on. Whateley, the Archbishop of Dublin,
has witnessed and investigated his cures, and I
have seen his autograph papers attesting the facts.
Mr Dillon Tennant was led in the first instance to
these beneficences by seeing a friend in great torture,
unrelieved by other means, and he was moved to say
to himself : ' In the name of God, I'll mesmerize
him.' He did so, and in a few minutes the pain
was gone. After this he tried the same thing for
many sufferers, always ' in the name of God,' and
succeeded. . . . Each person so treated and the
operation sometimes proceeded at the rate of a cure
per minute he bent on his knees to give thanks to
God. . . . Frequently from 50 to 100 persons were
relieved at one seance. I am glad to have seen him,
because he recalls to available knowledge certain
old-fashioned Prophets and Apostles whom one too
easily forgets. His, like theirs, appears to be the
actual power of faith as an organ and a substance.
I am not able, it is true, to place great stress upon
his cases : I know too little of them ; but they send
me to the Apostolical and Christian cures, which I
do potentially believe ; and place before my eyes
what I have long been looking for ; the Divine
Stem of Healing ; that channel pipe which runs
with panaceas ; and of which all medicine, in its
varieties of systems, is but the branches. . . .
There are arts better than ours ; machines and ways

76 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

better than ours ; and the world shows its Divine
origin in being large enough to have GOD in it as well

as man."

In June of this year (1849) Wilkinson began his
duties as writer of a weekly letter for The New
York Tribune. There are words which suggest
that the task was not congenial, and it was relin-
quished in December 1850.

Meanwhile he found an important work to do for
the New Church. He has got himself entangled,
he says in a letter, in a life of Swedenborg, which
had occupied all his time ; it is going on very fast
and he hopes that another fortnight will disburden
him of it; he does it con amore, having long been
preparing for it. He means to have it published
also in the United States. He began it with the
idea of a threepenny pamphlet in his mind ; but it
grew under his hand and formed a very complete
biography, so far as the facts and their order are
concerned. " I scarcely venture to hope that the
Swedenborgians will like it, because I have not
treated Swedenborg as either a ne plus ultra or an
idol. It is not a philosophical or progressive affair
professedly ; though I hope that it will disabuse
worthy people of some of their falacies."

His expectations were more than realized, for
the sectarian Swedenborgians did not like the book
indeed, they " vituperated " it ; but worthy people
who were seeking candid information on the subject

BIOGRAPHY 77

were otherwise minded. So much so that a new
and slightly amended edition was called for in
1860, and the book still has a public of its own.
The work of three hundred odd pages was completed
in three months.

We have seen that Wilkinson had been working
hard harder probably than was wise for some
years. For it must be remembered that he added
a growing quantity of medical work to the extra-
ordinary literary output which stands to his credit.
There is little wonder, then, that the strain showed
itself at times in mental depression and bodily
weakness. Mr James had expressed some intention
of bringing his family to Europe for educational
purposes. In a letter encouraging this project
Wilkinson writes to him (August 6, 1849) :
" Certainly this is a splendid climate for producing
healthful bodies, and a good thing too ; for the
quantity of work required of an Englishman is no
trifle. . . . Then, for a man like you, the Society
is ever varied, and the stimulation incessant. For
us, it is true, this is not so, for my ideas are merely
those of duty now ; I look on pleasure as impossible ;
and being like you (in ' Becky Sharp ') l a man of
all the sins, I look for no fact but in that everlasting
work that crushes out self-thought every moment.
Prison and task-mastering are the blessings the
vast blessings of the day, and happy is he over whom

1 A recent study of Thackeray's heroine, written by Mr James.

78 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

necessity stands with a rod of iron, feruling him for
every moment not devoted to the most absorbing
labour. That is my creed for myself, and though
I cannot contemplate it as an ultimate lot, yet I
do feel that its only limit is the grave. I am j oiliest
when I feel it most, and I make a creed of it, to have
all artificial checks provided against rebellion."

Shortly before this he had written : " For a length
of time now I have been hydropathizing, and with
huge benefit to mind and body. 'Tis astonishing
how much more work I can do, what absence of
customary invitations I feel, under the wishy-washy
regime. Even when I am ill, I can still work on,
and observe my malaise with a kind of upper mind,
as though my sickness was ... an instructive
panorama."

Wilkinson was one of those men who required
" a little wine for his stomach's sake," and his
pessimism vanished speedily when he returned to
his usual and very moderate potations. But the
experience left him sore against the ultra-teetotal
school. He wrote a long account of Carpenter's
prize essay on Alcoholic Liquors, to Mr James, and
concluded it as follows : " The human chemistry
of the case, which lies in the union of emotions with
wine, is therefore quite a different study from the
animal chemistry. And as this is a matter that is
of very great importance for men's thoughts at
present, I design to go into it in my labours, and to

BIOGRAPHY 79

endeavour to develop a few sentences of a precise
kind, on the subject of this unknown human
chemistry. Certainly wine shall not be blasphemed
in my hearing, without a strenuous effort to rescue
it from peril." His defence of wine against the
" blasphemies " of the intemperate temperance
party duly appeared in The Human Body (pp. 168
et seq.).

During these years his dissatisfaction in the tradi-
tional practice of medicine had been growing in Wil-
kinson's mind. The doctrine of Hahnemann had been
brought to his notice by Mr James, by Mrs Carter,
another American friend, and by the general interest
which followed the introduction of its practice into
England by Dr Quin in 1837. He had read what works
he could find on the subject, and had experimented
in the treatment inculcated by them more and more
extensively, until he must be regarded as a staunch
Homoeopath in 1850. His works, words, and ideas
in this connection will best be considered in a separate
chapter. But his conversion was an event in his
life too important to be passed over without mention
here ; since, as we have seen, it reconciled him to
practice and made him happy in it. His clientele
increased at once, and he must now be regarded
from a changed point of view. Up to 1850, he was
a writer, specializing upon theology from a Sweden-
borgian outlook, who practised physic for a main-
tenance ; from that time forward he was a physician

80 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

who found time to write upon the old subjects.
Only two more translations from Swedenborg's
writings came from his pen, and they were separated
by an interval of more than thirty years.

Hitherto his medical and scientific knowledge
had tinctured his work for the New Church. His
vital interest in that Church never flagged : but we
have now reached a period, and a long one, in which
the interest seldom showed itself in his writings,
except as illustrative of matters medical and
scientific. This " second manner " lasted, indeed,
until he virtually retired from practice ; or, rather,
encouraged practice to retire from him. But there
was a transition period, and in it he produced what
was, perhaps, of all his writings, the work most
fully characteristic of the man.

This book, " The Human Body and its Connection
with Man, illustrated by the Principal Organs,"
was a substitute for the publication of his lectures ;
but it represents those lectures as elaborated and
enriched by the reflections of the author since they
had been delivered. The first mention of it occurs
in a letter to his father in July 1849 ; but a letter
to Mr James, at the end of the same year, enters
into more detail.

" This is the first work on which I at all stake
myself, and I am proportionately anxious to put the
last hand to it. On nothing else have I accumulated
labour. And, as you are to be its patron saint,

BIOGRAPHY 81

I am particularly tremulous on your account also.
The field is a new one that of the Correspondences
of the Human Frame; I do not mean the spiritual
correspondences, but the continuations of it into
nature, into industry, into society, and into mind.
I feel that the physical man is the keystone of the
arch of the arts, and that to open his truths, be it
ever so little, is to prepare the way for that Artist
Man whom you herald, who really dwells now
in the physical man as a soul, and who is to come
forth one day as an Animated Society. True body
is the easiest way of altering mind, and I am deeply
anxious to use it as such. Once dip into its Lake
of Truths, I see no controversies ahead nothing
but reconciled parties and co-operating sinews.
My work, however, will, I fear, be only suggestive ;
but even that will be something."

Of the need of some such work as he is doing, he
wrote x :

" When I look at the disconnection in science
between man and his own body, I cease to wonder
at the difficulty the great Emerson has in thinking
of an incarnate God. Why, the philosophers have
never yet got to think of man himself as incarnate.
They admit either the flesh without the spirit, or
the spirit without the flesh. The thought has yet
to come which will combine the two. The present
thought admits no incarnations whatever not even

1 Letter to Mr H. J. James, January 25, 1850.

F

82 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

those of lice and flies. It has two ends, ghosts and
minerals, but no meaning, which are flesh."

" The Human Body " was published in May 1851,
and dedicated to Mr James. It was published by
subscription. The aim and method of the work
appear in Wilkinson's " Proposal for Publishing."
In it he says : " The human body, as an object
of science, has hitherto been the property of one
profession ; it has been studied only after death,
when it is the reverse of human, to afford light to
medicine, which takes no cognisance of it but when
diseased. Death has slyly proffered his torch to
the art of healing. A different study, not super-
seding yet subjugating the former, is needed to
connect the body with life, health, and business ;
a study that brings the plain to illustrate the obscure,
and the common to interpret the extraordinary.
To further such a study is the object of the present
work, in which we hope to show by examples that
the anatomy of man is other than that of the dis-
secting room, and that the knife is the feeblest
although the first instrument for opening the
mysteries of the human being."

A review of the book in the New York Daily
Tribune says that it was probably the first attempt
ever made, by a professional man, to connect the
technical facts of anatomy and physiology with the
truths of Revelation. " At all events it is the
only one whose superb and lavish ability entitles

BIOGRAPHY 83

it to an enduring mention. Ordinary men have
no beliefs. They have only knowledge. . . . Yet
this is precisely Dr Wilkinson's infatuation : he
evidently believes what other people only remember.
His memory is manifestly and wholly subservient
to the highest intellectual uses. Nothing comes into
it by the portals of sense which is not immediately
divested of its dusty garments, and elevated into
the chambers of the understanding, these to be
associated with . angelic company. He diligently
gathers all that the best men and the most sacred
books have said of God and man, but no symptoms
of congestion appear, because the knowledge is
instantly sublimated into belief, and thence descends
in copious showers of influence upon all the fields
of practical life. . . . Such exactly is Dr Wilkinson's
force the force of a man who is alive with glowing
life from the centre of his intellect to the circum-
ference. When such a man accordingly descends
into the arena of the schools, we must not be surprised
to see teaching assume a novel aspect, and old truths
beam forth with quite original beauty. Those who
wish an intellectual treat of the very highest de-
scription, a banquet in which every dish is made
to yield the subtlest and most unexpected aromas,
by a cooking the most expert and masterly ever
practised, may safely be referred to the book whose
name we have already cited."

" The Human Body " was widely read ; indeed

84 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

it probably attained a more general repute than any
other of Wilkinson's works. A second edition was
published in 1860. Its original appearance was
somewhat delayed by an interruption in the writing
of it. Wilkinson received a commission for a trans-
lation. It appeared in 1852, " The Generative
Organs considered Anatomically, Physically, and
Philosophically. A posthumous work of Sweden-
borg, translated from the Latin."

At the end of 1850 the Wilkinsons moved again r
to Sussex Lodge, St John's Wood. The house is
nearly opposite to 4 Finchley Road, the home for
nearly fifty years, where Dr Wilkinson died.

Prospects were beginning to look brighter. A
letter to his father reports, in June 1851, " Our
move to Sussex Lodge has been, so far, a very good
thing for us ; my practice has greatly increased, and
our connections are both extended and heightened.
We have indeed constant struggles and wants, but
we hope that the turn in our long lane of cares may
be near at hand." It was so. The practice soon
demanded and justified a carriage : and whatever
care may have sat behind the rider was not due
to want of a sufficient income.

A large and growing medical practice does not
conduce to steady literary work; moreover, the
study necessary to practise homoeopathy is consider-
able and absorbing. But if for a time Wilkinson's
pen was unproductive, he was using what leisure

BIOGRAPHY 85

he had in preparing, perhaps unconsciously, for
future literary work. The Norse languages had
always attracted him. Perhaps it was an hereditary
leaning, for his family is originally of Danish extrac-
tion. He gives a short account of his studies in
the Preface to " Voluspa," writing in November
1897 : "At the end of a long life we yearn back and
think biographically, and gentle readers will forgive
a retrospect. So I tell them the story of my
love of the far North. It is between forty and
fifty years since I enjoyed my first acquaintance with
the Eddaic Books. Tegner's ' Frithiof ' and his
fine translation of ' Vafthrudhuismal ' were my
lures into further reading. Through friends in
Scandinavia the old Icelandic tongue came before
me. The Lord's Prayer read in Icelandic made
me say to myself, * This is my language.' Rektor
P. A. Siljestrom, the schoolmaster of Sweden, and a
master scholar of his country, a man of enduring
scientific and liberal genius, read to me my first
line of grammatical Old Norse. I6n A. Hjaltalin,
my dear Icelander who found me in Reykiavik,
became my teacher in London, and carried me
through the Eddas.

Dr Siljestrom was a great friend of Wilkinson's.
When he left England for the United States, armed
with an introduction to Mr James, he left his young
wife at Hampstead with his English friends.
Wilkinson " took the opportunity of her presence

86 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

to learn a little Swedish." They had at this time
a German guest also, Mr Neuberg, a friend of both
Emerson and Carlyle. On June 24, 1837, Wilkinson
wrote to Mr Emerson :

" I have requested Mr Clapp to send you a copy
of my work on ' The Human Body and its Connexion
with Man,' just published ; it is, I hope, in a double
sense, my last book. I owe you a grudge for having
in some part been a party to the book : for your
good opinion of my former labours has had, I am sure,
a certain egging effect upon me in this. Perhaps
you will be so kind as to be a little sour and un-
satisfactory about the present, that you may con-
tribute to warn me away from the strand of
scribbling.

" My pursuit for relaxation this long time past
has been Northern Literature and Languages,
Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic ; and the contents
which these three bags carry are attractive to me
at present. Mr Carlyle also is as deep as an old
laundry- woman in these rich old clothes."

But his estimate of the contents of " those three
bags " was much higher than Carlyle's. 1

" I have lately been reading Carlyle's Essay on
Odin in the 'Hero-Worship,' in pursuance of my
present Scandinavian studies. What a useful
affair it doubtless was, but what a poor thing it is !
He admits the inimitableness of this mythology,

1 Letter to Mr H. I. James, January 25, 1850.

BIOGRAPHY 87

and yet humbly craves at last of his readers, to
consent to admit that the authors of it were not
downright fools ! The prisoner at the bar has
beaten the Greeks in majesty and depth, and all
the thoughts of men in invention, pray you, Gentle-
men of the jury, let the verdict be ' No jackass ! '
... It is perfectly clear that Carlyle has no insight
into the circumstances attending the production
of these wonders of the Fore-time, or he would never
have said that they were the first rude but powerful
conceptions of the earliest gazers upon nature.
We see here that he has been born in an atmosphere
fetid with Scotch philosophers, which imposed upon
him the belief in the original savagery of man."

His strong views on the receptivity of abori-
ginal man found full expression in " Revelation,
Mythology, Correspondences " (1887) and in " The
African and the True Christian Religion, his Magna
Charta " (1892).

These studies were no temporary amusement.
In 1855, Wilkinson writes to Mr James : " I am
busy ; but still I find it necessary to interpolate
my active life with some sort of recreation with
some fad entirely apart from physic. My Icelandic
studies furnish me with this ; and I am going to
send you, for my name- sake, 1 a translation of one
of the Eddaic songs ' Hamar's Heimt ' Thor's

1 One of Mr James' sons was christened " Garth Wilkinson" ; one
of Wilkinson's daughters was " Mary James."

88 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

recovery of his hammer. Belonging to the child-
hood of our races, it will serve for our children,
as well as for our old gentlemen that is to say,
both for the Boy and Old Henry. I have in my
vicinity a young sculptor of great promise, for whom
I have undertaken to make a few versions of these
wonderful songs, he intending to illustrate them ;
and it is not impossible, if life and valour be given
for the next ten years, that I may even essay the
terribly ambitious work of a translation of the
' Elder Edda,' a work which, if well done, would
surprise literature ; give Greece and Rome a thwack
unexpected, but wanted long ; and shed a new
light upon the English language. It has for me also
an interest, in that it is the earliest, the most hoar
phenomenon, in the morning of our ages ; while
Swedenborg, also of Scandinavia, is the latest hour
of the same day ; and he who knows of both hears
deep calling unto deep."

For the main part, however, the practice of his
profession gives him enough to do. " When you pay
your promised visit," he writes to Mr James, in
May 1853, " I do not think that you will find me
altered to the extent that you have heard. It is
true I am now in a new pursuit which excludes all
old ones as active guests though it leaves them
as subjects on which I rejoice to think that advance-
ment is being made by others. Surely, my dear
Henry James, you would not cramp me by insisting

BIOGRAPHY 89

that I shall study, or without study swallow, your
great batches of universals, when I solemnly tell you
that they are out of my line. . . . Respect the blink-
eyedness of the doctor who, in comparison with
curing an old cough or a chronic gouty limb, thinks
astronomy and theology to be for him of little
moment, and of the cobbler who, for fear of diverting
his skill from boot-soles, can't be got to look at
the moon through the finest telescope that was ever
framed. I am that Doctor and Cobbler, I never
could do two things at once, and thence each pursuit,
with me, implies the temporary incapacity for
others."

There is something entertaining in Garth
Wilkinson's plea to be treated mercifully as the
possessor of "a one-storeyed intellect." In this
very letter he shows the keenest interest in the
spiritualism of that day. " The ferment all this
produces shows that some great stirrer is a-troubling
the waters ; and, for my part, though I have not been
near the spirits, I am quite convinced, and would
avow it publicly, that the present movement is
Providential in its best parts, in something more
than the sense of permission : that it also belongs
to the age ; inasmuch as it is cheap, easy, and ex-
peditious Revelation, or the Spiritual World for the
Million, and that its lowness is the strong point and
claim about it."

It appears that Wilkinson was firm so far as

90 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

abstaining from attendance at seances was concerned ;
but for years he lived in an atmosphere of " spiritual-
ism." Those nearest to him were in association
with mediums and were moved to execute spirit-
drawings. His brother William was for many years
editor of the Spiritual Magazine; and, in 1856,
Garth Wilkinson himself edited a number of the
Spiritual Herald. We shall soon reach his writing
of the " Improvisations from the Spirit." But he was
to escape from this " obsession " with a modified
opinion and a hearty dislike for the whole subject.
His final attitude is plain. 1 " I do not deny, but
prize, in their place, spontaneous motions of the
spiritual world upon and in the natural world.
If there be a spiritual world in proximity with
our world, such manifestations are, some of them r
according to order, and no one is chargeable with
them. On the other hand, solicited intercourse
with the spiritual world is, to me, a mistake, and,
with my convictions, it would be a sin to take part
in seances, or any other means, in such solicitation."
He refused to discuss either his own experiences
or the general subject, in conversation ; saying only
that he had gone into the matter extensively and
wished to say nothing about it.

In a letter to Mr James we get a glimpse of Wilkin-
son's political views at this time (July 1850). They

1 Quoted without reference, in the University Magazine, June 1879,,
Art. " J. J. Garth Wilkinson."

BIOGRAPHY 91

were, like most of his views, highly eclectic. Sir
Robert Peel had just died by accident, and the Duke
of Wellington was not likely to be long spared to
the country.

" No one so much represented England as he
[Sir Robert Peel]. Even the soubriquet of ' Perfidious
Albion ' was justified in its best sense in him. A
man of continual expediency, he could never be
bound to party save as the tool, and not the master
of ever-shifting occasion. He got into parties,
but his practical tendencies speedily won them and
broke them up. And in this he was seconded by
the ' Iron Duke,' who, apparently inflexible, is
really flexible as a shirt of mail ; which, impenetrable
from without, is yet jointed, and bends about to
every requirement of the body politic. These two
men have been the two great Revolutionists, more
Anglico, and have succeeded in breaking up the old
associations of parties to such an extent, that many
years must elapse before a new party can be formed
with any chance of coherence beyond the attainment
of temporary objects. For to neither of them were
political combinations regarded as hearty clubs with
banners, watchwords, and c no surrender ' tunes ;
but simply as means, more or less useful, but subject
to be superannuated and discarded as soon as ever
the circumstances altered. They suffered much
from the hot fragments of parties which they them-
selves had broken to atoms, but Providence had

92 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

given them both prepared skins of courage and
apathy ; and they held out their ground until Sir
Robert's death, as the two best defended and least
offensive men in England. Their graves will be
honoured by no majority or minority, but by the
whole legislature and people of England."

This was the principle of Wilkinson's own method.
His opinions were strong, and he supported them
strongly ; but he had kept means ever in their
place, and was always ready to avail himself of new
ones, but upon the means in use at any one time he
concentrated his attention. It may have left him
open to a charge of inconsistency at the hands of
the superficial. That concerned him not at all,
Nor was he able to conceive of anything except God,
His laws and Word, as exempt from being some day
" superannuated and discarded." He could calmly
foresee a time when even Swedenborg's message
would prove but provisional and preparatory for
another. He was essentially an individualist and an
eclectic. He was not nullius addictus jurare in verba
magistri; rather, he was ready to hail any man as
his master so long as, and only so long as, he could
teach and help him forward in the matter in hand.
The wise strong man has only one principle, the glory
of his Maker ; and his best way of furthering that
is the education of his own character. Consistent
in that, he can afford to appear inconsistent in all
else.

BIOGRAPHY 9S

As to politics, certainly, Wilkinson was to be found
in various companies at various times. Mr Francis
Newman, brother of the Cardinal, hailed him as a
Republican in 1867 : neT describes himself as a Con-
servative, in 1885. But his friend Mr Matheson
defined his position more accurately, in 1888 : "I
am Mathesonian in my political views, which I
think have certain dissonances with Wilkinsonianism
that is to say, with a certain radically liberal
conservatism."

In 1854, England had two great subjects to think
about, the cholera and the Crimean War : the two
insisted upon being considered together in the
prevalence of cholera among our soldiers and sailors
in the Crimea.

Wilkinson saw his opportunity and wrote, " War,
Cholera, and the Ministry of Health, an Appeal to
Sir Benjamin Hall and the British People." In
the form of an open letter, it promulgates homoeo-
pathy as the medicine of the future. With its
medical side we are not at present concerned ; but
the reasoning power, the good temper, the wit and
aplomb which Wilkinson showed in its pages brought
him many readers. As a reviewer said, " If a man
wants to see the faculty horsewhipped, or tossed
in a blanket, or tried at the bar, or dressed in a cap
and bells ... we advise him to read Dr Wilkinson's
' Ministry of Health.' It is a most original piece
of medical remonstrance, dressed up in festive

94 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

style, like a Christmas box, or a New Year's Day
gift. It contains both facts and fun and sharp
surgical satire, with good humour combined."
Statistics are relieved by sarcasm ; pathos gives
place to suggestions in practice : it even deals in
prophecy which has since been fulfilled. For it
foretells the medical woman. " Dr Blackwell ! is
already but one of a band of which Florence Night-
ingale is the English chief, and some of the best
woman's blood in this country is speeding to the
field of war to do woman's work as it has not been
done before since the days of Jeanne d'Arc. I
will not trust myself to think or to feel, while the
Lord thus calls up His chosen into their long empty
places, lest the brain should be drowned in the too
great hour. Only I will say, it rejoices me that
medicine (call it nursing if you please, but it will
not stop there) is one thing which has unchained the
feet of woman, and cast away her Chinese shoes."
" The Ministry of Health " is a contribution to a
controversy which now and again still comes before
the public, and as such it is forgotten ; but, as a
long and sustained flight in true humour, it deserves
readers and admirers at the present time.

In this book Wilkinson advocated registration
of all who chose to practise physic. He returned
more seriously to the same subject in an article
which he wrote for the British Journal of Homceo-

1 The first woman M.D. of the United States.

BIOGRAPHY 95

under the title of " Unlicensed Medicine "
in 1855.

In 1856 he produced a curious pamphlet, " Painting
with both Hands, or the Adoption of the Principle
of the Stereoscope in Art, as a Means to Binocular
Pictures," under the pseudonym John Love. The
idea of the pamphlet was that "ambidextrous or
two-handed painting will realize in art also binoculars
or two-eyed pictures. . . . The suggestion of such
a method, involving, as it does, a new and difficult
education, would be monstrous if painting remained
as it was ; but this, as I have said, is no longer the
case ; for the stereoscope, by beating it on its own
basis, has shown that it is not true to Nature, and
moreover has demonstrated where the failing lies."

But the suggestion itself was based on a fallacy :
Art does not aim to produce an image such as is seen
through the stereoscope, but such as is seen through
the eye ; and that, not in its entirety, but with
selective power. " Painting with both Hands "
contains, however, an amusing hit at Ruskin, who
" hops along on one leg to criticism with a power
and rapidity quite new ; and sometimes moves so
fast that his hopping even mimics progress." The
pamphlet did not found a new school of painting.

Wilkinson's next work was " Improvisations from
the Spirit " (1857). An account of it is given in
Gilchrist's "Life of William Blake" (vol. i.
p. 382).

96 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

" A very singular example of the closest and most
absolute resemblance to Blake's poetry may be met
with (if only one could meet with it) in a phantas-
mal sort of little book, published, or perhaps not
published, but only printed, some years since, and
entitled ' Improvisations of (sic) the Spirit.' It
bears no author's name, but was written by Dr
J. J. Garth Wilkinson, the highly gifted Editor
of Swedenborg's writings, and author of a Life of him,
to whom we owe a reprint of the poems in Blake's
' Songs of Innocence and Experience.' These
improvisations profess to be written under precisely
the same kind of spiritual guidance, amounting to
abnegation of personal effort in the writer, which
Blake supposed to have presided over the produc-
tion of his ' Jerusalem,' etc. The little book has
passed into the general (and, in all other cases, richly
deserved) limbo of the modern ' Spiritualistic '
muse. It is a very thick little book, however un-
substantial its origin ; and contains, amid much that
is disjointed or hopelessly obscure (but then, why
be the polisher of poems for which a ghost, and not
even your own ghost, is alone responsible ?), many
passages, and indeed whole compositions of a remote
and charming beauty, or sometimes of a grotesque,
figurative relation of things of another sphere, which
are startlingly akin to Blake's writings could pass,
in fact, for no one's but his. Professing, as they do,
the same new kind of authorship, they might afford

BIOGRAPHY 97

plenty of material for comparison and bewildered
speculation, if such were in any request."

Wilkinson's own account of the genesis of this
book is as follows (quoted, without reference, in
The University Magazine, June 1879) :

" A theme is chosen and written down. So soon
as this is done, the first impression upon the mind
which succeeds the act of writing the title, is the
beginning of the evolution of that theme, no matter
how strange or alien the word or phrase may seem.
. . . An act of faith is signalized in accepting the
first mental movement, the first word that comes
as the response to the mind's desire for the unfold-
ment of the subject. . . . Reason and will are
not primary powers in this process, but secondary,
not direct, but regulative ; and imagination, instead
of conceiving and constructing, only supplies words
and phrases piece-meal, or however much it receives ;
it is as a disc on which the subject is projected, not
as an active concipient organ."

It must be remembered, firstly, that Wilkinson
showed some power of versifying, when a boy at
school, and that he was then a greedy reader of
poetry ; secondly, that Blake was the only poet
whom (so far as we know) he had studied systematic-
aDy and exhaustively since that time. The only
other contribution towards judgment which shall
be added here is that no doubt can exist concerning
Wilkinson's serious simplicity in his account of the

6

98 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

" influx " to which he considered himself subject.
With these helps the reader must judge of the matter
for himself.

Two specimens of these " Improvisations " may,
however, be welcome, since the book which contains
them is practically unobtainable.

Shall my Poet cup

Now be dried up ?

Yes : it shall dry up now, to ope again :

And then it shall disclose a deeper vein,

And more abundant waters, when thy health

And Faith and Hope and Good are greater Wealth

Of Poet- Power within thee : then thy heart

Shall be more full of courage, and have part

In fountains not so easily exhaust.

At present thou art Vanity's Holocaust,

And greatly burnt up by her love of Beauty,

For sake of Beauty's show so, do thy Duty :

And song shall come in bright Attendances :

And specially when upon thy knees,

Thou dost invite the Muse Celestial down.

At other times she does but sit and frown,

While lower spirits, not songful, leering sprites,

Usurp her harp-strings, and put out her lights.

Heaven, the Heart's Heaven, and Home, the land of God,

Is the Parnassus on whose mystic sod

The Muses build their real mansion. Life

Is the great field whereon the heavenly Strife

And heavenly harmony of Song do enter,

And where in unison of Love they centre.

Make thy Home Heaven, then, and then Poesy

Married to Christ, love shall well visit thee.

Farewell till then : for until then we flee.

Cowley and Herbert's sphere

Are no longer here.

BIOGRAPHY 99

I asked, Can I write Song this morning ?

Yes, you can, with power and sweetness too.
Your Muse is here : you nothing have to do,
But to sit by, while she indites the Song :
Her brightness flows around you, and ere long,
You will so recognize her friendly hand,
That naught shall intervene to countermand
God's will with you, that you be instrument,
To work out His most holy high intent
Of pouring Truth, apart from mortal pride,
Upon all men who willingly abide,
In Truth's and Beauty's way : so take your pen,
Be a good boy ; and down to earth again
Shall step sweet Spirit- Melodies, more rare
Than ever yet have thrilled thy native air.

The book has always had admirers and adherents,
and Wilkinson was frequently importuned for copies.
Dr Westland Marston, acknowledging a presentation
copy, says : " I find matter of deep psychological
interest. I value it for its spirit which seems to me
an utterance of the law or essence of which objects
are exponents ; although the forms are occasionally
perplexed. There are perpetual glints of spiritual
life and revelations which could not be got at by any
process of straining, though the two sets of images
often run the one into the otfcer. . . . Clearly the
book, proceeding from the initial force of the mind,
rather than from the representative faculties, will
only be patent to the initial mind to the initiated :
but by such it will be deeply valued." Another

100 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

correspondent, writing as late as 1871, says : 4 You
have assuredly long ago heard from far worthier
lips the just recognition of their value ; but I cannot
forbear expressing to you my deep sense of the
mingled charm of strong simplicity and mystic
splendour that characterize so many of them."
But " the initiated " are few, and Mr Gilchrist's
dictum, that the book has passed into the limbo of
the modern " spiritualist " muse, must be accepted.
Still, two poems, those upon " Turner " and " The
Diamond " appear in the little known authology
of verse which Mr Emerson issued under the title
" Parnassus."

This year, 1857, saw a very different production
of Wilkinson's pen a pamphlet upon " The Use
of Glanderine and Farcine in the treatment of
Pulmonary and other Diseases " which introduced
two new nosodes to medical practice. Another
pamphlet, embracing the two influences which were
then potent upon him, was " The Homeopathic
principle applied to Insanity, a proposal to treat
Insanity by Spiritualism."

There follow several years in which Wilkinson
published little. In 1858 he took his son James, then
a boy of fourteen, with him for a tour in Norway and
Sweden, at that time regarded as a piece of serious
travel. It is not necessary to follow them through
the experiences of a holiday now sufficiently usual ;
but one extract may be quoted from his letters as

BIOGRAPHY 101

evidence of his delight and appreciation of what he

saw. 1

" I am almost stunned by the magnificence and
fearful beauty of Nature in these Norse wildernesses
of mountains. Lake upon lake,, waterfall upon
waterfall, mountains barren as stones, mountains
clad with heather, with fir trees, with superb various
forests, emerald pictures of farms hung up here and
there in the halls of the giants : you have no con-
ception of it. Tell our friend Mr Shrubsole that here
are Rockeries by the thousand miles together. . . .
The might of water here, doubling and embracing
all the great creations, which see themselves like
thoughts within it, is something unparalleled to my
mind. Only just now we have visited near our
Hotel, a foss or waterfall, the descent of a great
river through deep stony gorges into the subjacent
lake, which at first took away my powers of apprecia-
tion. It is the realm of the Poetry of the Giants.
. . . Jamie drives himself like a Norwegian."

During this year Garth Wilkinson's eldest daughter,
Emma, was betrothed to Lieut. Hermann Pertz,
son of G. H. Pertz. 2

The marriage was a happy one to all concerned
and gave great interest in all German matters to
the family. The two daughters of this union were,

1 Letter to his wife, August 7, 1858.

2 Editor of ' ' Monumenta Germanise Historica/' and author of
"Stem's Leben."

102 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

after the death of their parents, to supply bright and
loving company to Garth Wilkinson in his old age.

Spiritualism contributed a strange acquaintance
in Thomas Lake Harris. Writing to a follower
of Harris, 1 Wilkinson says :

" Mr and Mrs Harris stayed with me in this house
for some weeks when they first visited London.
I have many memories of them both. Afterwards
they lodged in Queen's Terrace, close to this, during
the whole time of his delivery of his sermons in
Wigmore Street, in what is now Steinway Hall.
In that Hall I also heard both Carlyle and Emerson
lecture. There is a poem in Regina addressed
to my late daughter, Emma Marsh Pertz.

" When Harris visited London some years after,
he passed me by, and was with the Oliphants and
others. It was a proof of his spiritual judgment,
for in the meantime I had departed from any-
thing like pupilage to his genius, and gradually left
Spiritualism on any other than the lines of the
New Religion commissioned through Swedenborg. I
do not, however, close myself against any future
dispensation. But I cannot see that T. L. Harris
has continued the Revelation of the Divine Sense
of the Word, though he has broken ground in social
and practical life : perhaps deep ground."

Lawrence Oliphant was also a friend of this period.
" To-day I have a present of West India Jams from

1 Letter to Mr J. Thomson, September 1, 1893.

BIOGRAPHY 10S

Mrs Bennett, Mr Oliphant's friend," wrote Wilkinson
in 1865. " He wants to go to Mr Harris in America.
Their difficulty seems coming" There was perhaps
more than " spiritual judgment " in Harris' avoid-
ance of his former host ; for when Oliphant pressed
Wilkinson for an introduction to Harris, Wilkinson
declined it, with the expressed opinion that the
acquaintance was not for Oliphant's good. It had
been well for the latter if he had accepted his friend's
opinion. But he went to Queen's Terrace, walked
outside Harris' lodgings for some time in doubt,
and finally introduced himself to " the Prophet,"
with results which will be remembered by all who
have read his biography.

The last contemporary mention of Harris, in the
same year, reads, " Harris is starting a Bank, of
which he is President." Wilkinson does not appear
to have been a depositor.

In the same letter, he mentions, " The day before
yesterday I had a long talk with Mr and Mrs G. H.
Lewes. Romola was very nice, and looked particu-
larly well."

Among the letters of 1859 is one from Lola Montez,
who seeks Garth Wilkinson's acquaintance on account
of his position in the New Church, his authorship
of the " Improvisations," and his connection with
T. L. Harris.

These years were full of professional work, and that
is very probably the reason why they have left few

104 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

traces of other interests. Charles Lamb said that
the true works of Elia were to be found in the ledgers
of India House. The writings of Garth Wilkinson
between 1857 and 1880 must, in general, be sought
in his Case Books. During this time he established
a consulting room at 76 Wimpole Street and moved
house to 4 Finchley Road. In 1865 he delivered
a discourse upon " Our Social Health " before
The Ladies' Sanitary Association, which was after-
wards published, and ran through two editions:
it set forth righteousness, both public and private,
as an essential to social well-being. His holidays
bulk largely in his correspondence, perhaps because
he found more time for writing then than during
the working months. These holidays were varied
and extensive.

In 1859, starting late in consequence of his
daughter's wedding, Wilkinson went South, to Algiers,
md Marseilles, then home by Aries, Nismes and Lyons.
He wrote, among others, a lively letter to his son.

" I arrived just before the Annual Arab Races,
which the French Government has instituted, by
premiums, to improve the breed of Arab Horses.
The town was full of Arab cavaliers, from all parts,
even to the great desert : all Tribes, such figures
as you have seen in books, at full gallop, with lance
and matchlock. From 5 to 6 thousand men were
encamped on Mustapha Superieure, a place above
the town, where also we saw troops of camels.

BIOGRAPHY 105

In the race, 7 Arabs started every 5 minutes, for
four hours, and the victor, the moment his steed
came in, leapt down, and was paid his premium.
It was a strange sight, to see these wild people, with
their rude turbans and long garments of flannel,
with naked legs, flying past in fierce competition
on their Arab horses. Then the sides of the course
were occupied also by the picturesque chivalry
of the Atlas. Besides these, there were the dapper
French Officers and multitudes of Moors, Jews,
Negros ; a mixture of many nations. One or two
Arabs were killed in the rush ; one very near me.
The French have an ambulance bed on the course
ready to receive them ; and, one moment in all the
fire of rivalry, the next they are being walked off
in their coffins. Their Arab freres take no notice
and a few deaths are considered a matter of course."

The sunshine, the mixture of races, and the fruit,
of which he gives a picturesque catalogue, appear
to have most impressed him.

In 1860, there was another wedding in the family,
his second daughter marrying Mr B. St John Matthews
(afterwards Attwood-Matthews) of Pontrilas Court,
Herefordshire. The holiday of this year took him
to Paris, Brussels and Malines. Paris, not being
in revolution, did not please him so much as it had
done in 1848.

In 1861 he took an autumn trip to Spain with
his friend Mr Decimus Hand, meeting on board

106 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

ship with General Outram, " who in these his last
days is quite a picture and a study to me. He
talks very unreservedly of his past life." The route
was by Gibraltar, Cadiz, Xeres (where he " tasted
sherry at the fountain head "), Seville, Cordova
and Granada with the Alhambra. The Cathedral
of Seville greatly impressed him. " At 9 this morn-
ing we went into the Cathedral, which made me
literally heave with emotion. Hands said, " I say,
Wilkinson, doesn't this knock one to pieces ? "
To say that it beggars and eclipses all the ecclesi-
astical edifices I have seen conveys no idea of what
I felt. Art in the grandest shape yet realized,
one feels that it is also Nature, and that rock and
mountain would own it as a sister. It is so stupend-
ous in size and weight, that Antwerp or Notre Dame
dwindles before its columns. And the lights that
play within it, by their intensity of colour, give
a kind of awful finish, though ever shifting, to the
interior. We also ascended the Moorish Tower,
340 feet, the easiest ascent I ever made, and saw
the view of Seville, of a village on the hill where
Cortez lived, the Bull Ring, the Guadalquiver, etc.
But coming back to the Cathedral, the view looked
small, to the surprizing inside."

Characteristic of the man was his intense love
of light and of trees. He seldom visited a place
without recording some enjoyment gained from one
or both of them. It will be remembered that in his

BIOGRAPHY 107

autobiographical fragment he mentions the joy
which he felt as a boy on a certain " picnic of
picnics " on meeting with " jumpers and other
plants of such regions, which were as parts of a new
world to him." Writing to his youngest daughter,
on this Spanish journey, he heads his letter :

" ALHAMBRA ! ! September 25, 1861 :-

" The above will speak volumes. I am not
writing within the precincts of the Alhambra ! I
shall not waste words with descriptions : but only
say that all words fail to convey an idea of this
ruin with its surroundings. It and Granada are
the Arabian Nights made into a palace and
city. You cannot see the El Hamar (Alhambra)
without the sun-green gardens, of Orange, Pome-
granate, Vine, Fig, and all other most blooming
and aromatic creatures : nor it, or these, without
the sun-blue sky, paved as it is here with its own
light, reflected up in one great column from mountain
and plain, as far as the eye can reach. In all the
sight there is a glow, as though we were feeling in
the day the immediate pulsation of the sun. And
the men and women one sees, as well as the piled
fruits, seem as if they were the result and natural
jewel of all these influences.

" I speak only on the picturesque side, and attempt
to throw you a copper, representing the Imperial
Coinage of the beauty of this old Moorish place,

108 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

as it is embalmed in the true beauty of God's great
Nature."

The possessor, or possessed, of such enthusiasm
did well to travel ; but he had an eye quick to see
the humbler beauties of the garden. Writing to
the same daughter (Mrs Claughton Mathews) in
1898, he says :

" It seems absurd to talk to you, any of you,
about greenwoods ; either in Brockenhurst or
Sevenoaks. But the happiness of a patch of blue
precocious squills, and of daffodils and primroses
and oxlips fills the conceit until I think of my
little flower-beds as country scenery, embosomed
now also in horse-chestnut trees great and small,
revelling in live bold buds, the promise of Spring."

The last time I saw him, only a few weeks before
his death, when his walks were confined to the little
London garden behind his home, Garth Wilkinson
showed me, with affectionate satisfaction, some of
his garden treasures, reminiscent of sunny days of
travel ; a chestnut grown from a nut which he had
picked up at Cordova, Hydrastis C anode, sis brought
from the States, Phytolacca sent to him ^ v a friend
in New Zealand. His mind's eye could still Decon-
struct the scenes where these things had flourished
at their best, and he was warmed and lighted up
by memory.

In 1863 his holiday took him no farther than
Scotland and the English Lakes ; and in 1864 he

BIOGRAPHY 109

paid a delightful visit to his daughter, Mrs Pertz,
and his infant grandchildren, at Salzburg ; seeing
Nuremburg, Innsbruck and Vienna, in company with
Captain Pertz.

1866 took him to Iceland, which appealed to him
so keenly that he repeated the journey in 1868.
Journals of both visits are full of keen observation
and great enjoyment. Icelandic travel in those
days was regarded as distinctly adventurous, and
there was a good deal of roughness and discomfort
in the experience : but it was salutary. " All our
party," he wrote, " seems better than usual ; and
for my part I cannot doubt that it is more feasible
for me to be here on this rough platform of experience,
than to be enjoying the luxuries of good hotels in
pleasant places on the Continent. I feel strengthen-
ing for my dear work at home." The greatest danger
that he escaped was from an unexpected eruption
of the Great Geyser while he was bathing in a warm
pool. Tons of boiling water fell on the place he had
occupied but a moment before.

Here, as elsewhere, he made friends. Mr Ion
a Hyaltalin helped him much, as we have seen,
in his study of the language. He came to England
later, became Librarian of the Advocates' Library
in Edinburgh, returned home, and is now head of
a College in Modruvellir. The friendship was close
and life-long.

The holiday of 1869 realized the hopes of many

110 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

years. It took the form of a rush through part
of the United States. He was away from home
only five weeks. The poet, Longfellow, and his
family, were on board the steamer on the outward
journey, and with them Wilkinson foregathered.
He saw New York, Albany, Niagara, Montreal,
Quebec, Lake Champlain, Lake George, Boston and
Cambridge. Here he was fraternally received by
Mr James, and renewed the unbroken friendship
of old times. Wilkinson found his god-son an
ex-captain and farmer on a large scale, who, having
fought and bled in command of a negro Regiment,
can hope no better for the coloured brother than that
he may die out. From Mr James' house Wilkinson
visited Longfellow, with whom he found Charles
Sumner, Chairman of the Committee for Foreign
Affairs in the Senate, and notorious at this time
for his fierceness over the Alabama Claims. Though
he was conciliatory and " claimed " to be a reader
of Wilkinson's works, on the recommendation of
Emerson, the conversation ended in an outspoken
argument. Old patients, old literary colleagues, new
friends who were old readers, fell in Wilkinson's way
at every turn : he found himself famous in the States,
his name a pass-word. It is not to be wondered at
that he enjoyed his hurried holiday.

On his return home, he wrote in his travelling
journal a reply to the constant question which had
greeted him. " What do you think of our country ? "

BIOGRAPHY 111

" Sitting at home here, Jonathan, Brother and dear
Boy, I like what I have seen of it very extremely ;
and even feel that I fantastically regret having spent
holidays in France, Germany, Switzerland and other
old and irrelevant places, when I might earlier have
grasped your singular and ever-grasping fingers.

" I was fourteen days and some hours there, and
felt the touch of a new life, a new vitality, a new
velocity in everybody. I was impressed spiritually
with the fact of a new Mission in Humanity, which
America is carrying out : a mission the basis and
nutriment of which is Making Money and Getting
on ; not the All-mighty Dollar, but the indefinitely
plentiful Dollar as a Divine Need for men to execute
their Mission. I was impressed with the Divine
Value of Money as distinctively opposed to the
Aristocratic and Avaricious value of it, with the
fact that every man is determined to make it by
some services, to have it and to spend it. A new
consciousness of the worth of Life in Cash ; a con-
sciousness for want of which the operatives of Europe,
save in the Trades Unions, are rotting.

" 2. I was impressed with the fact that the American
People is Providentially hurled over the steeps and
difficulties of their Continent, fearless and therefore
free, to lay hold of it hour by hour, and cover it
with roads and cities ; and to show how rapid an
Architect Freedom is, in a new world all his own.
And that this period of New Building of all kinds

112 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

is not the making of a new Country, but of a
Cosmopolitan Place, veritably a New World ; which
will destroy Countries and institute the World.
That all lands will open into it, by henceforth vast
migrations ; and that by example, influence and
polity it will educate, flow into and impress all
countries, and be the crowning piece in the material
life of the Nations, and that God is palpably with
America all the time, and that it is Newly His, and
will kneel more reverently to Him than any other
World of Peoples.

And that the Vices and Corruptions of America
are of the greatest, but do not hinder her first
mighty Work ; but will be burnt up as dried tares
when the day of her purgation comes. And that
now they are spiritually less deadly, though more
odorously offensive, than the perfumed and fine-
skinned Vices of European States."

Wilkinson, on his return, was strongly impressed
with the necessity for the repeal of the Contagious
Diseases (Women) Act. Mrs Josephine Butler and
Mr F. W. Newman, the Cardinal's brother, were
his friends, and it was not long before he took his
place by their side. The periodical inspection
of prostitutes in naval and military towns was a
matter which made him white with anger and
indignation. He wrote an open letter of sixteen
pages to the Home Secretary, Mr Bruce, in which
he stated his views with every plain statement

BIOGRAPHY 113

of medical circumstance which could make the
administration of the Act horrible and loathsome
in the minds of his readers. Hating the subject,
hating to write of it, he did so, once and for all,
that others might hate it as he did. " The Forcible
Introspection of Women for the Army and Navy
by the Oligarchy considered physically " is painful
reading. Whatever views may be held upon the
subject, it is now unnecessary that this little
pamphlet should be read. In a tract entitled " A
Free State and Free Medicine," further advocating
the dischartering of his profession, Wilkinson dealt
also with this subject. At the same time we find him
strongly supporting the Married Woman's Property
Bill, in a letter to Mrs Jacob Bright.

Those of us who are old enough remember the
intense excitement in England concerning the
Franco-Prussian War, how general sympathy was
first opposed to France and came round to her
in her debacle. It was sure to be otherwise in
Wilkinson's household, who had a son-in-law fighting
in the Prussian Engineers. As usual, Wilkinson
" did not mince matters." On August 12, 1870
he wrote to his wife. " The evil of the day is that
they (the Prussians) have been wantonly assaulted
and invaded by ' Diaboleon,' and that they are
obliged to resist to the death, and to put an end to
the state of things which ' Diaboleon ' represents.
And they are doing it with a speed and certainty

114 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

which seems favoured of Heaven. Never before
has there been a more sublime spectacle of a great
Nation moving without a break from home into
battle, against a mere standing army of bandits
and cut-throats led by a murderous Devil. The
result will show that a standing Army has no chance
against an embattled people. . . . ' Diaboleon '
said well that ' he went to increase Liberty and
Civilization.' He did. A deeper Diaboleon, whose
fool he is, sent him forth, and in the destruction
of Self and Host, Liberty and Civilization will breathe
afresh, even for poor, but soon emancipated, France."

Many prayers were sent up for the safety of
Hermann Pertz who saw much service, was the
first Officer to enter Metz, received the Iron Cross
at Versailles and returned safely to his family, amidst
a chorus of thanksgiving.

Wilkinson had long foreseen German Unity.
Writing to his daughter Mrs Pertz in 1866 during
" The Seven Weeks' War," he said : " I am deeply
interested in all you tell me of dear Hermann, for
whose preservation I am thankful to God ; and also
in the European conflict. If Prussia were a liberal
power, she might unite Germany into one nationality.
... At present, all she can do is to overrun alien
Germany ; but she will be unable to hold whatever
she cannot Prussianize ; for Prussianization appears
to be the height and depth and breadth of her aim,
and a very poor aim it is to justify the loss of so

BIOGRAPHY 115

many lives. But God may engraft His own ends
upon the small aims of Kings and Ministers, and
force the little fellows to carry them out ; as he
engrafted Total Emancipation upon the pettifogging
Aims of the United States, and they had to fight
till it was gained."

In October 1870, Wilkinson joined Mrs Pertz
in Berlin. Writing to his wife the day after his
arrival, he says. " Thank God, I am safe and well
in this comfortable Hotel, and have just break-
fasted in my bedroom, with our own Emma, and
the boys beside me. They were here by 9 in
the morning to see Grossvater in bed, in which
they succeeded. . . . There are no regiments
visible on the road, and almost no young men ;
this nation is evidently in a great crisis. Every-
one seems quiet and composed ; no boasting. The
wounded in every train ; we had three in my carriage.
. . . France has no great cause to band her against
the great cause that they (the Germans) have, the
Unity of a Great German Fatherland. . . . She has
caught her Conqueror. His doom is to conquer
and to chain her for a time. No light doom either."
On October 22, he writes, " At 10 to-day we went
to the Wounded, with 144 jackets, socks and
comforters, besides cigars. We were through at
1. Mrs Pertz 1 (senior) went with us, and
we met at the hospital barracks the Countess

1 Nee Homer, wife of G. H. Pertz.

116 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

Stein, who accompanied us, also with stores.
She spoke in such splendid terms of Emma and
all she did at Strassburg ; of her courage and
rapidity. You should see Emma among the flocks
of soldiers ; she quite towers, and addresses them
in the easiest way ; and evidently loves service
among them, touched, no doubt, continually by her
absent Hermann. I am astonished at her, for she
so thoroughly heads and leads the relieving party.
We gave to Germans and French ; and I had pleasant
chats with the latter. You have only to see the whole
stalwart faces of the Germans, their build, and
contrast with the French, to know that that set
of Germans once awakened and once victorious,
the French would have no chance in the greater game
of War."

This year saw the beginning of Wilkinson's crusade
against compulsory vaccination. His labours in
this regard occupied his pen and his leisure ex-
tensively for some eight or nine years. It is a
matter which will be best considered in a separate
chapter.

In 1871, Mary James, Wilkinson's youngest
daughter, was married to Mr Francis Claughton
Mathews. It was a union which began a close and
affectionate friendship, lasting through the remainder
of Wilkinson's life. The marriage of his children
gave Wilkinson ties near home and contributed
with his age (for he was now nearing his sixtieth

BIOGRAPHY 117

birthday), to diminish his zest for distant and rapid
holiday excursions. Indeed we may regard his
holidays of this and the next year as marking the
end of such travel, in an orgy of two consecutive
trips to Norway. His journal of the first of these
journeys abounds in descriptions of scenery by land
and sea and pleasantly reflects the sunshine flecked
with sea-birds. " I have a most delightful Captain,"
he writes to his wife, " who quite pets me ; the
constant change of people at the Stationer ; the
putting off of the boats ; and the men and women
who come on board, is a pleasant study for a holiday
time. And then, sea, sky, mountains, all clear and
sweet, for hundreds and thousands of miles. ... I
am on deck nearly all day ; enjoying the warm
fresh air, and conversing about with the passengers."
His son was contemplating the construction of a
railway line from Sundsvall to Trondhjem, and he
was busy in collecting information : the Swedes
were opposed to it, as likely to exhalt Trondhjem
at the expense of Stockholm. " They say the
Swedish Government hinders it. Probably this is
a Norwegian mistake. But, from what I hear,
I cannot but think that the Railway will be made."
James Wilkinson also engineered the Lulea line,
the first and only railway which crosses the Arctic
circle.

Wilkinson's speculative imagination was still
active, " Loud carousing in the Cabin," he reported

118 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

on one of the outward journeys, " Constant Toasts "
-" Skal "for " lyckHga neise." " What can toasts
mean ? They seem generally to be convivial prayers,
with the Principal Character left out. ... As I
noticed of the clouds in going to Iceland, so here, not
only of the clouds, but of the rocks and mountains,
I see that animal and human forms are constantly
suggested. Men's faces on the fell-tops, tortoises,
elephants, all huge mammals, seem impacted, and
struggling in bonds of stone here. All folks notice
it. Is there not a nisus animalis and nisus humanus
really signified, a spiritual moulding inevitable,
in these things called freaks of Nature, and creatures
of the imagination ? I believe it, and that no Alp
can be upheaved, and no rock settle, without feeling
that inner force of God by which all nature tends to
higher forms and to man. The more plastic the
sphere, the more representative ; so that cloudland
shows it most dramatically. But granite obeys
also, and is from within, as well as from without,
a creature of the Divine and Human Imagination."

In a long-delayed letter to Mrs Pertz, at about
this time, Wilkinson bewails his inability to do more
than meet the absolute daily necessities of corre-
spondence. His practice now was very large and he
had frequently to visit patients at considerable
distances such as Eastbourne, Oswestry and
Leamington. He found his relaxation chiefly in
reading ; the Norse studies were pursued, and he

BIOGRAPHY 119

began a course of the Latin Classics which he followed
with occasional interruptions to the end of his life.
Virgil, especially the sixth JSneid, was a favourite
of his ; and he was pleased to meet anyone who
would discuss Lucretius with him. Plautus and
Terence amused him greatly. He was less addicted
to Greek. His holidays were now spent chiefly in
visiting his married daughters in Herefordshire and
in Kent. In 1875, however, he spent a few weeks
in Guernsey and enjoyed it ; but he found an air
of retired gentility about the island which would
not long have contented him. In 1879, he paid
his last visit to Major and Mrs Pertz, at the Althof
Loetzen in East Prussia, where the Major was Com-
mandant of a small fortress. This Wilkinson duly
inspected, but it is characteristic of him that after
noting that "it is a great order " he proceeds to
mention the presence of wildflowers and the dis-
turbance of a hare from her form on one of the
slopes. The Major's overgrown garden and its cure
by clearances and pruning gave him great joy.
Major Pertz retired soon after this visit and found
occupation on the newly constructed Lynn and
Fakenham Railway, the work of James Wilkinson
junior. But he did not long survive his retirement
and died at Holt in Norfolk. It was the first entry
of death into Wilkinson's immediate family circle,
and he was deeply touched. Hermann Pertz
was a dear friend as well as the husband of a

120 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

loved and loving daughter for more than twenty
years.

In 1882 Wilkinson translated from the Swedish
a tract by his friend Rektor Siljestrom upon the
Vaccination question, entitled " A momentous
Education question for the consideration of Parents
and others who desire the well-being of the Rising
Generation." A second edition was called for in
the following year. He also wrote a little account
of " Swedenborg's Doctrines and the Translation
of his Works," a contribution to a series of New
Church Tracts. It was a subject upon which no
living man could speak with greater authority.
" As one who has had some experience in translating
Swedenborg," he says, " I can aver that at first
for a length of time I had the feeling that it would
be easy and right to popularize him somewhat, and
to melt down his Proprium and his Scientifics, his
Goods, Truths and Uses and many other of his
terms. I tried my hand and failed. I found that
none but Ulysses can bend the bow of Ulysses :
that Swedenborg in Latin must be Swedenborg
in English ; and so at last I came close to his terms,
and, as far as I could get, got into their marrow ;
and then I did not want to melt them down, but felt
sure then, as I feel now, that they are a genuine
coinage which the reader when he learns it, will
never wish to see defaced in any least lineament, lest
a value which is priceless be lost or altered thereby.

BIOGRAPHY 121

I learned, in short, that the terms are from the
rational mint of the New Dispensation, and that
it is not lawful to break or vary the coins of that
Kingdom into other forms."

If the reader will be at the pains to compare a
passage of the original Swedenborgian Latin with
Wilkinson's translation he will see how modest is the
claim which the translator sets forward for his
work. He will be inclined to claim more for him ;
and to say that Wilkinson mastered the use of
Elizabethan prose for this purpose. The English of
the translations is the English of the Authorized
Version of the Scriptures, the comprehensive and
comprehensible English of Cranmer's Collects in the
Book of Common Prayer.

In 1883, Wilkinson edited for his friend the
Reverend J. le G. Brereton, a paper entitled One
Teacher : one Law which demonstrated " the
essential oneness of the Old and the New Testaments."
In the same year he brought out, on his own account,
a brochure on " Pasteur and Jenner " in which he
bound Vivisection and Vaccination together for
the purpose of gibbeting them the more effectually.
He also write a tractate on " The Treatment of Small-
pox by Hydrastis Canadenses and Veratrun vivide "
and followed it in 1884 by another one, " Vaccination
as a source of Small-pox."

1885 was a productive year in literary output ;
nor did the quality of the work show any degeneration.

122 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

A translation of Swedenborg's " Sapientia Angelica
de Divino Amore " appeared. It consists of fifteen
pages of introduction and 344 pages of text. The
last of Wilkinson's translations from his master's
works, it shows his matured skill as well as his vigour
and perseverance. " The Greater Origins and Issues
of Life and Death" followed. "This," as the
preface explains, " was commenced in order to furnish
to the public mind the Author's testimony and
convictions concerning what is called Vivisection.
. . . The determination of his heart and intellect
against it has grown with his growth, strengthened
with his strength. He has written upon it from
time to time. And now, when a great public opinion
is rising by his side, he had been compelled to put
forth all his strength as one combatant in the cause
of common humanity and common science."

" Medical Specialism " was originally an article
contributed to the Homoeopathic World, which was
reprinted. It deals with a favourite subject of
its author's the specializing of and in the Practice
of Medicine.

In a letter to his daughter Mrs Frank Mathews,
he gives the following account of his feelings and
doings at this time :

" As I get older, care settles down more heavily ;
but I have not yet discovered whether it is that there
is more real care, or that I make the matter more
onerous. Probably the latter. However, I am truly

BIOGRAPHY

glad that this year I have been allowed to complete
two Books, and to have them in my past. My
translation of Swedenborg's ' Divine Love and
Wisdom ' is the most important literary work
of my life ; I have been through it in various editions
some six times, and have now done my best with
it. You will be glad to hear that my labours are
hailed and appreciated warmly both in this country
and in America ; and that my own Book is selling
as well as I can expect on both sides of the Atlantic.
There is a good demand for it in Canada. If bodily
health continues, there are still other subjects on
which I should wish to speak ; especially theological-
political, on the rule of a true Church in and over
Democracy. . . . But whether I am strong enough
to enter this field, time and health will show. I
like to tell you these things ; for they are the only
intimate part of me, and I wish you to participate
in them.

" Dear Mamma and I are very happy together,
especially in being at one in all our best hopes and
beliefs ; and in waiting with a patience which is
a new and good fruit of years. In the midst of all
our many anxieties for all our dear families, she is
always buoyant at the end, and submissive to
the Will, which is above our dictation. She is
reconcilable to events by a Power above herself."

The " waiting with patience " for one of the
partners was not to be long, for in March 1886,

124 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

came the great sorrow of Wilkinson's life, the sorrow
which one of every pair of lovers must expect. The
loving and comprehending companion of forty -six
years of happy wedded life had latterly been failing
in health, and was taken from him. Neither religion
nor philosophy can obviate the impact of such a
blow at first ; while self is self, the removal of so
much must shock what of us is not stunned. In
this way Garth Wilkinson suffered ; but he knew well
how near is the spirit world, how continuous with
that which is ours ; and he emerged, dismayed but
not perplexed, from the first inevitable selfishness
of grief. It was from the depth of experience and
conviction that he wrote to the widow of a dear and
recently lost friend. ' You have both of you
changed worlds ; he is in sight of his Home, perhaps
in it : you are in the Faith and Good of it, as you were
not when he was here. It is sure that where conjugal
love exists, the death of either mate increases and
elevates the union as no other happening can."

Wilkinson was now seventy- three ; he had not
lost heart, but he was weary and had lost his chief
earthly support. He had already given up his
consulting room in Wimpole Street, and henceforth
he retired, so far as he was allowed to do so, from
the practice of his profession. There were old and
loved patients whom he could not abandon ; these
he still received at his house and visited when
necessary ; but he would not add to their number.

BIOGRAPHY 125

He was far from idle, however. His interest in
life and in all questions of the day remained keen
to the last. If his aim had been to prolong his life
and he once told Crabbe Robinson that he wished
to see his century, " to see the world flower open
and the great things that will be, and to help,"
he could not have acted more wisely, for interest
is the great physical spring of life. He was still
conscious of a message to be delivered, he wished to
reinforce work he had done in the past. His tolera-
tion became more wide, his judgments more gentle,
his affections more general. He voluntarily and
consciously entered into old age, but it was an old
age of mental beauty, of good humours, of kindli-
ness and wisdom : qualities which not only endeared
him to old friends, but which also brought him new
ones, and that not seldom among the young. People
sought him out and asked leave to visit him ; they
came with questions on all sorts of subjects and went
away with information gathered from wide reading
and wider observation. Seldom can there have been
a man who was less, in the unpleasant American
phrase, " a back number." He was in touch with
the thinking and working men in all his favoured
subjects, and, if they came to him for advice or
information, he usually drew something from them
for his own mental store.

At this time he was good to see. Above six feet
in height and but little bowed by time; inclined

126 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

to stoutness but far from unwieldiness ; bearded
almost to the waist, the hair grizzled but still show-
ing some of its original brown ; but slightly bald
over a high- domed forehead ; thick and rough of
eyebrow over keen blue eyes which flashed under
his gold-rimmed spectacles ; handsome and tidy in
his dress, he was a fine specimen of a cultured and
kindly gentleman. His voice was charming, strong,
vigorous and deep as the thought behind it ; prone
to hearty laughter, but not rarely a little broken
by anything of grandeur and pathos which had
touched him. It was a voice which comes back to
those who knew him as they read his books or recall
his talk. His enunciation was remarkably clear,
without any trace of precision, as his conversation
was full of learning without pedantry. Sitting by
his dwarf revolving bookcase, on which rested his
snuff box and a pile of books in many languages
and on many subjects, he made a picture which
never rises in the memory of his friends without
bringing pleasure and thankfulness with it.

In 1887 Wilkinson brought out " Revelation,
Mythology, Correspondences," a work in which he
set himself to show that Revelation was not confined
to the Jewish and Christian Churches, but that the
ancient mythologies, read by the light of corre-
spondences, was full of Divine teaching ; that there
was, in fact, a golden primaeval age. This was the
task to which he devoted the last years of his literary

BIOGRAPHY 127

power, and much of his work hereafter had the
promulgation of this idea for its object.

Of similar import was the book of 1888, " Oannes
according to Berosus," his theme in this instance
being the history of the culture of the Chaldeans
at the hands of Oannes, a Triton of the Persian
Gulf, as related by Berosus, priest of Bel's Temple
in the time of Alexander the Great ; it gives its
meaning according to the doctrine of correspondences,
and argues therefrom its inspired nature.

Wilkinson's books brought him interesting corre-
spondents, and " Oannes " was specially provocative
in this way. Among these letters was one from
" your affectionate and indebted Westland Marston."
He wrote on July 11, 1888, " Oannes (I thought
before I found you make the same suggestion, that
he was nominally, and more than nominally, akin
to the Evangelist 'IcocWqcr) has quite absorbed me.
Whether derived from the earliest Word or not, there
is no doubt, I think, that all ancient legends and
mythologies were correspondences to (and from ?)
the original Bible. I remember even in the myth-
ology of Ancient Mexico (a remote region where
its symbols seem unlikely to have penetrated),
there is a striking adumbration both of the Lord
and the devil, and the Mexicans were looking forward
to the advent of the former (?) as the Jews were
to that of the Messiah. A literature of Divine
Revelations in some measure leavening the Universe

128 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

in the spiritual verity of which the unity of all
languages (one day to be established) is externally
the type. A thousand thanks for this most interest-
ing book, which, besides its general theme, arrests
one, almost on every page, by some pregnant hint
or suggestion." It met also with a warm expression
of approval from Professor Sayce.

In 1888 Wilkinson collected all the information
possible about Jasper Swedenborg, Bishop of Skara,
and father of the more famous Emanuel Swedenborg,
which originally appeared as an article in The New
Church Magazine, but was reprinted for private
circulation. This was an act of piety which he
thoroughly enjoyed.

" The Soul is Form and doth the Body make "
followed in 1890. This was a return to the subject
of the lectures of 1848 and of " The Human Body
and its Connexion with Man " of 1851 ; but now
the doctrine of Correspondences is more plainly
stated ; the anatomy is treated briefly ; its applica-
tion is the confessed object of the work. Concentrat-
ing his attention upon the interdependence of two
organs, Wilkinson was able to deal with them at
greater length. He himself described the book as
treating of " the less known functions and Spiritual
Correspondences of the heart and lungs."

A letter to Dr Theobald during this year shows
well how essential was the part which Correspondence
played in Wilkinson's method of thought. With him

BIOGRAPHY 129

it was no question of how far illustration may be
used for purposes of argument ; visible things were
to him more than types of things invisible ; they
were, rather, the actual presentation of things un-
seen and outside our present ken, but capable of
yielding direct instruction by the use of the Key
of Correspondence.

. " I am not in agreement with your dear Uncle's
Psychology. The word Emotions belongs to an age,
the present, in which religious states are transient
or passing. Emotions are ultimate states of the Will
manifested to the senses ; the last efflorescences
of affections. The affections are the direct con-
tinuations of the Will of Ruling Love ; the articles
of which the Will is the heart ; the great constant
channels which carry the life of the Will through
the whole Man ; and he is what they are. The
emotions are manifested occasional ends of the
affections."

" Religion with man must reside in the Will,
or it is nowhere else. There residing, it is a new
conscience, formed divinely by truth of doctrine
committed to life lived. Faith and conscience
are here at one, or the same thing. Man directly
makes Will, faith and conscience, ' by acting
sincerely, justly and faithfully ' under the Lord's
guidance in all his day's works or duties. He
acknowledges that it is all the Lord's mercy which

enables him to do this, but he does not in the same

i

ISO JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

sense feel it ; but feels, and is to feel, that he is doing
it himself. Otherwise he would be a Nothing. I
do not believe in ' the sense of infinite dependence/
(here in a pencil note is added "7 do, but the word
4 absolute ' is better than ' infinite ' ") or that
Angel or Man ever had it. The sense of independence
of God, constantly given by Him, but intellectually
acknowledged to be only an appearance necessary
for finite existence, seems more true."

On June 3, 1892, Wilkinson wrote to his daughter
Mrs Pertz on his eightieth birthday.

" Your strong hand- writing and dear heart-
writing do me good, and make me grateful on my
eightieth birthday. It is a long life to review, and
God the Lord is merciful. I have to thank and sing
praises to Him for His mercies beyond all deserts.
She who is with Him gave me dear children, and
brought them up in virtue and enlightenment,
and they and grandchildren and great-grandchildren
are round me. May we be all ' the people of His
pasture and the sheep of His hand ! '

In this, his eighty-first year, Wilkinson produced
two books. The first, " The African and the True
Christian Religion, his Magna Charta," a study
in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, "was
yet another of his arguments in favour of widely-
spread primaeval knowledge, as well as a plea for
a fuller recognition of the Negro's brotherhood to
the white man." The second, " Epidemic Man and

BIOGRAPHY 131

Ms Visitations " was, in his own words to a friend
44 intended to assert that all our Diseases are our own
deeds, confronting us, by conversion of forces into
bodily ruin and planetary catastrophe " ; a doctrine
which, if it could but gain general acceptance, would
immensely encourage " physiological righteousness."

On August 8, 1893, Wilkinson suffered another
great loss in the death of his eldest daughter, Mrs
Pertz. During her widowhood she had lived much
-with her father and had acted as mistress of his home.
She was a woman of great understanding ; of great
will power, often unsuspected under her gentleness
and self-forgetfulness. Her loss was a grievous
one and shook Wilkinson severely. Two grand-
daughters, Emma and Florence Pertz, however,
were left to brighten and comfort the home.

Journeys were now difficult, but Wilkinson was
still able to visit his daughters at Pontrilas Court
and at Sevenoaks. He also enjoyed staying with
the Countess de Noailles at Eastbourne, who shared
his views on many subjects, and who to the end
remained his friend and patient.

Still, though strength was failing, the will was
firm ; and the literary output continued, though
it cost more toil, and was less rapidly executed ;
but it showed no loss of power or of force and felicity
in expression.

During this year the Reverend Professor Tafel,
a friend of many years' standing died, with whom

JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

Wilkinson had been closely associated in the trans-
lation and editing of Swedenborg's work on " The
Brain," which Tafel ultimately dedicated to his
friend. Wilkinson had revised the proofs page by
page, being probably the only Englishman of sufficient
knowledge at once of Swedenborg and Anatomy
to undertake the task. The friendship thus formed
was a close one, and its close (in so far as death could
close any friendship of Wilkinson's) saddened him.
He remained in correspondence with Mrs Tafel for
years.

The following letter is characteristic of the man at
this time, full of old memories, failing somewhat
in bodily strength, but with a firm and faithful
hold upon present interests l :

" Thank you for the beautiful ferns and flowers-
My fifty-sixth Wedding Day has been peaceful,
and full of memories. All of you are the garland
given me by that faithful and excellent wife.

" Dr Dudgeon has just been here, and finds me
on the mend. I have a bronchial attack ; but it
is yielding to his treatment. To-day I am down
earlier than usual.

" Come when you can, but do not fatigue yourself.

" Our international relations are distressful. We
are necessarily an isolated nation. An island with
vast present possessions must be. We don't easily
form alliances, in order that we may not be re-

1 Letter to his daughter, Mrs F. C. Mathews, January 5, 1896.

BIOGRAPHY 133

sponsible for concerns not our own. Hence we are
thought proud and haughty, and every power has
a pluck at us. And we are a peculiar people, I
believe in a good sense. All these are dislikeable
points. May the Lord of Nations make us just and
honest, and brave therein ! "

There was something of the spirit of this last
paragraph, a spirit of statesmanship rather than
of politics, in his next book, " The Affections of
Armed Powers : a plea for a School of little Nations."
He dedicated it to his son-in-law Mr Frank Mathews,
with whom a strong intellectual sympathy and
mutual esteem ever existed.

Another book of this year (1897) was the sub-
ject of much thought and of considerable study.
Wilkinson himself said that " it had loomed in his
mind for fifty years of cogitative thought." As
far back as 1890, writing to his friend Professor
Victor Rydberg, to acknowledge his book " Fadernas
Gudasaga," he said that he had long meditated
a spiritual commentary upon " Voluspa," and adds,
" Remains of good, tenderly remembered from
innocent times, are the uncorrupted dwellings of
the Lord in men, and the fresh starting points
of salvation." And, on another occasion, he wrote,
" I read almost all the Norse mythology into an
internal sense, corresponding to the Revealed
internal sense." Wilkinson was deeply learned in
Icelandic, Swedish, and German Mythology, and had

134- JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

contemplated a thorough treatment of the whole
subject, but he fell back upon " Voluspa " as within
his limits of power and time. How earnestly he
pursued his theme, the following extract from a
letter to Mr Ion a Hjaltalin will show. " My effort,
which must be merely tentative and ground-breaking,
to find whether the seed can be sown upon it, so as
to come towards revelation, is of a different kind
(to some previous etymological considerations). All
I can say is that as I proceed, praying that some
of the wise and simple little children above may be
sent to open my mind, I do make progress, and find
a connected chain, or a road with good bridges, in
parts of the ' Voluspa ' which seem most abrupt.
And, for all I discern, the Prophecy needs no altering
or the order of its chants"

" The Book of Edda called < Voluspa,' a study in
its scriptural and Spiritual Correspondences " deals
with the full internal interpretation of the Prophecy
of the Vala. The work is prettily dedicated to his
granddaughters, " My free comrades in life and
work," as the studies of a grandfather.

There is some special quality of wear and work
in that generation of old people which is now very
rapidly disappearing, the children of the men who
broke Napoleon at Waterloo. Whether their children,
in their turn, will astonish their descendants by
force and longevity is questionable. But it is certain
that the generation to which Wilkinson belonged

BIOGRAPHY 135

was blessed with a continuance of force beyond
what is ordinary. In them was the saying, " Those
whom the Gods love die young," explained as
meaning, " Those whom the Gods love are young
until they die." But, though it appears postponed,
there is a period for them too ; and, one by one, we
see these " grand old men " gathered to their fathers.
Slowly and in the main without suffering, Wilkinson
realized physically that he was nearing his end.
" I am weak rather, but fairly well," he wrote, 1
" and I believe that if I had faith to begin I could
get on with my writing. But I fear I am ' giving
in,' and making my entry into the eighty-fifth room
of existence into an excuse for being served instead
of serving." But he was far indeed from complaint. 2
" I am now very infirm, and can hardly do anything
of a day's work. This was also the reason of my
long silence on which your ladies commented. I
am weak and poorly. So you must make allowance
for me, and, if I can write but seldom, know that
I value intercourse with your mind highly, as I
have always done, since I knew you. My Grand-
daughters, after a long German tour, are now at
home for the winter, and I have every blessing that
old age requires. They are treasures."

Of " that which should accompany old age, as
Honour, love, obedience, troops of friends," nothing

1 Letter to Mrs Ruxton, August 8, 1896.

2 Letter to Mr Thomson, October 28, 1896.

136 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

was lacking nor was the outlook into the future
a doubting one. He wrote to a friend 1 who told him
of a dream concerning one " gone before."

"It is the beginning of a world of Revelations,
of which the last, to those who can receive it, is
permanence and Heaven. How such assurances
should chasten Churchyard theology, and teach that
the days of death are short for everyone and that
resurrection out of the body begins immediately !
And then that the Use of having been born in nature
shines out before good spirits as soon as they awaken.
The dead world has been the A.B.C. and forerunner
of the living world : the dead Sun of the living Sun :
no metaphor or parable, but a Spiritual Orb with
the Lord God Almighty veiled in its glory. It is
lovely to think, lovelier to know, that the landscapes
of heaven are peopled with trees, with birds, with
animals, and that all these are divine Uses and
continual scriptures of instruction, varying from
state to state."

In 1898 Wilkinson found great pleasure in the
marriage of his elder granddaughter, Miss Emma
Leonora Pertz, to Mr E. J. Payne, author of " The
History of the New World called America." He
was a learned and highly cultured man, congenial
in tastes to his new relations. It was an event
which threw a cheerful gleam of light upon Wilkinson's
last months.

1 Letter to Mrs Roberts, May 20, 1897.

BIOGRAPHY 137

There remained one more piece of literary work
for the full brain and tired hand of the man of
eighty-seven. The last book, like the first, con-
tributed to the Swedenborgian interpretation of
revelation. The preface to Blake's " Songs of
Innocence and Experience " was dated July 9,
1839 when Wilkinson was but twenty-seven years
old ; he dated his dedication of " Isis and
Osiris in the Book of Respirations; Prophecy in
the Churches; In the Word; God with Us;
The Revelation of Jesus Christ," to Dr Alfred
Wiedemann, Professor in the University of Bonn,
on September 16, 1899. In the first he quoted
Swedenborg as giving the only possible explanation
of Blake's inspiration : in the last he demonstrates
by the Doctrine of Correspondences the internal
meaning of an ancient Egyptian scroll. He had
passed away before the latter, the last of a long
series, had reached his hand.

Less than a week before his death he wrote to
his daughter, Mrs F. C. Mathews, to celebrate her
birthday. He said, " I am well and surrounded by
your bounties. ... I had hoped to have my little
Book, ' Isis and Osiris in the Book of Respirations '
on your table ; but it will come to you later. In-
asmuch as the fresh air is strength, my unlearned
Tract, for such it is, may carry you both through
some journeys of sight and thought, ending in new
regions. Since boyhood I have been a student

138 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

of spirit, material and substantial, and it is for me
a sacred continuation unbroken to the end of the
chain."

There was nothing violent in the manner of his
death : the strength of body failed and the spirit
returned to God who gave it. Surrounded by all
whom he loved best on earth, this lifelong searcher
for the unknown stepped into the Valley of the
Shadow, nothing doubting that the comfort of
the Shepherd's rod and staff would be with him,
confidently expecting the company and enlighten-
ment of those who had gone before him to the Home
of the Father.

It should be possible for one who has enjoyed
acquaintance with Garth Wilkinson, with his friends,
with his many published writings, with his most
intimate private correspondence, to indicate some
cardinal points in his nature around which his motives
and activities were wont to revolve. Three such
convenient points for studying his character seem
to be his mysticism, his transcendentalism and his
impatience.

Mysticism is a word too often rendered obscure
by misuse. It should not be used to signify mystery
or vagueness of metaphysical aim. It is here used
of the sense of the immanence, or indwelling presence,
of God in the nature of man. Such a sense is seldom
entirely lacking in individuals, and it would appear

BIOGRAPHY 139

to play an essential part in the scheme of every
religious system. The mystic is one who possesses
this sense in a high degree and cultivates it as the
most noble part of his being. The Christian mystic
is one who cultivates this sense by constant reference
to the incarnation of Christ, the doctrine which
deduces from the human nature of the Divine Man
a promise of an increasing godliness for himself and
his fellows. This sense was strongly marked in Dr
Wilkinson : it found expression more frequently
and more fully as his nature developed, and as the
aim of his life-work defined itself before him. The
central importance of the Incarnation is dwelt upon
with growing insistence in both his books and his
letters. He himself was used to reserve the word
Theology for the Word of God communicated in
revelation ; but his own message, consisting as it
did throughout of teaching with regard to the re-
spective natures of God and man and of the relations
and duties consequent upon those natures, can
scarcely be classified as other than " theological "
according to the accepted use of terms.

A deep religious instinct showed itself early
in his life, in the musings and night-terrors, and
in the paradoxical rebellions of his childhood,
which occupy a relatively large space in his frag-
ment of Autobiography. From the end of the time
covered by that short document, we have little
evidence of his inner life until he began the copious

140 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

letter-writing which lasted to his death. But, he
confesses himself, in his intimate letters to his
fiancee, as having passed through a period of doubt
in his early manhood, and even speaks of himself
as having been a " rank skeptic " during some of
that time. It is not a rare experience of youth ; not
seldom it points rather to immature and necessarily
unsatisfactory attempts to fathom the deepest
subjects than to any mental attribute which will
work permanent effect upon character. It was so
in his case.

A new faith in God and a new human love reached
Garth Wilkinson almost simultaneously in his in-
troduction to the writings of Swedenborg and his
attachment to the lady who became his wife ; and
his progress in both may be traced in letters neither
fitted nor intended for quotation, but which make
it plain that each of these elements helped the other
in his new awakening. The force of this fresh grasp
of his relation to his Maker and to his fellows endured
and increased throughout Wilkinson's life, and his
character appears to have grown deeper and gentler
as the years went by, under the influence of the two
collateral factors. For the rest, it will suffice to
point out here that all knowledge which came in
his way and all experience which life brought to
him were sublimated into contributions toward
the comprehension and cultivation of the divine in
man.

BIOGRAPHY

The essential part which faith in the Godhead
and manhood of Christ played in Wilkinson's
mysticism, and the attitude of that mysticism
toward pantheism, will be best considered in a
chapter devoted to his religious position as a pupil
of his great master Swedenborg.

Transcendentalism, again, is a term which needs
careful definition before use. It has at least three
different significations. Firstly, it was applied to
a school of philosophy most commonly associated
with the name of Kant. Secondly, the term was
tacked on to a dreary religious sect of theists who
affirmed nothing but the existence of a God and
promulgated a dry optimism concerning the future
of our race. Thirdly, the name was applied, (no
man knowing wherefore, and themselves least of
all) to an ill defined intellectual and religious move-
ment among certain distinguished New Englanders
of whom Everett, Emerson and Channing may be
named as prominent, in the first half of the nine-
teenth century. Somebody has defined the move-
ment as "a pilgrimage from the idolatrous world
of creeds and rituals to the Temple of the Living God
in the soul ; " and it is not easy to include all those
who claimed to march under its banner within any
stricter limitation. Indeed, limits, formularies and
definitions were their abhorrence.

No reader or acquaintance of Wilkinson's could
be in any danger of classing him among the philo-

JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

sophic Transcendentalists. His own attitude towards
the Kantian school is very clearly displayed in the
Introductory Remarks with which he prefaced
his translation from Swedenborg, " Outlines of a
Philosophical Argument of the Infinite " (1847).

" In a word the upshot of Transcendentalism
was to regard all sensation, knowledge and thought
as subjective, and to make the individual believe
all the manifestations of God, nature or humanity
which are made to his mind, as so many presentations
of his own being. In this way, each man becomes
shut in the case of an opaque and impenetrable
selfhood, which not only absorbs and destroys
all outward truth, but makes it impossible to
have any confidence in the existence of our
brother man. To accept these consequences is the
manner in which Transcendentalism has answered
scepticism ! "

It is clear, too, that the Theistic Transcendentalisms
of our classification could claim no adherent in
Wilkinson. By a process of exclusion, therefore,
we are left to consider his position among the last
of our list.

Perhaps the only comprehensive bond which
would gain recognition among those whom for
brevity we will call the New England Transcenden-
talists was freedom from traditional ties. Each
enjoyed content while he followed individual con-
science by such light of revelation as he had ; and

BIOGRAPHY 143

each disclaimed all fettering limitations which at
any time marred that content. There was no
Church, no Brotherhood, no organization among
them : they were men and women seeking Spiritual
freedom by the light of conscience. In this alone
they shared sympathy : by this alone they recognized
each other in the world over which they were spread.
It was therefore quite consistent with his Trans-
cendentalism that Wilkinson should claim some
measure of theo-pneustic inspiration for Emanuel
Swedenborg, that he should at the same time be
a Communicant of the Church of England, and
that he should regard both Swedenborg and the
Church of England as Divine, but temporary, pro-
visions for man in his present state. But he held
that the Creator transcended all his creatures, and
that new revelations of the Nature and Will of the
Creator were constantly occurring, both through
the medium of Correspondences and otherwise ;
and that such revelations were to be constantly
expected and acknowledged.

This faculty for pushing forward towards the
unknown, this readiness to accept new light from
any source, caused uneasiness amongst those who
were his best wishers and most competent admirers.
Thus, Emerson, writing of Wilkinson soon after his
own second visit to England, in 1847, gave him
encouragement high and stately, but added a warning
in clear words :

144 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

" Wilkinson, the editor of Swedenborg, the anno-
tator of Fourrier, and the champion of Hahnemann,
has brought to metaphysics and to psychology a
native vigour, with a catholic perception of relations,
equal to the highest attempts, and a rhetoric like
the armoury of the invincible knights of old. There
is in the action of his mind a long Atlantic roll not
known except in deepest waters, and only lacking
what ought to accompany such powers, a manifest
centrality. If his mind does not rest in immovable
biases, perhaps the orbit is larger, and the return
is not yet ; but a master should inspire a confidence
that he will adhere to his convictions, and give his
present studies always the same high place."
(Emerson. English Traits. Literature).

There was in the earlier days of Dr Wilkinson's
conscious powers, a time when he was still unversed
in exercising them. It was difficult to display
manifest centrality, to avoid a suggestion of giddiness,
while new vistas of possibility spread themselves
at each point of view. Confidence that he would
adhere to his convictions was possible to friends
who knew the inherent rash honesty of their man :
but there had to be a season when the man was
himself uncertain which of his then " present studies "
would absorb him and exhibit itself as his pre-
dominant objective. It would have appalled an
ordinary inquirer concerning Swedenborgianism to
read such expressions as Dr Wilkinson wrote to

BIOGRAPHY 145

his friend Mr Henry James, when he was writing
of his lectures (October 26, 1848) :-

" I begin to find that the age is indeed ripe for all
that can be told it ; only it is in that degree of
childish weakness, that the Manner is indispensable
to the matter ; the terrible novelties must be said
pretty, and then they excite nothing but pleasant
tastes. ... I cannot have anything but hope
of the whole world, because I see everywhere either
earnest search for truth, as in France, or steady
obedience, as here ; and this ass, or that horse, will
alike serve for the august riders into the earthly
and the heavenly Jerusalems.

" This matter of growth is with me a most interest-
ing fact, as it places each age in freedom, and eman-
cipates all children from the overweening dominion
of their best and gentlest predecessors. A Sweden-
borg is good and great, but the babies of the new
generation are born to estates just fresh from God,
and which Swedenborg could not even conceive.
All men are new creations and want new creations
wherein and whereby to live."

The return of the forecast is not yet. Forty
years have passed, and the New Church has not
yet transcended and outgrown the teaching of
Swedenborg. A series of bright visions, born of
new illumination, cannot be profitably measured
by the foot-rule or tested by laws of perspective.
The years were to teach, as is their way, that

146 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

illumination is a difficult possession to transfer, even
by the most persuasive of manners. Experience was
to clip the wings of optimism, but never to break
them. A carefully limited field of work had
yet to be defined and followed. Plodding work,
patient reiteration, a brilliant versatility, indomitable
perseverance, were the qualities which forty years
were to educate and spend.

This " exorbitance," this tendency to fling off
red-hot fragments from the periphery at unexpected
angles, was not, even while it was most in action,
altogether hidden from the man himself : and he
was working towards a true consistency of aim and
expression. In his next letter to the same friend
he writes (November 22, 1848), relative to some
untraced communication, to The Harbinger of New
York :-

" I should rather that my paper on Correspondence
appeared without my name : it is a transition
paper, and I have already outgrown it in some parts.
Besides, I regret now all that I have printed, except
only my Translations. Please God, better and graver
things are to come from me than what have been

seen."

But transcendentalism, in the sense of eagerness
and readiness to discard limitations and to outgrow
the partial views of yesterday, remained the chief
and not least lovable traits in the man's nature
while he remained in sight.

BIOGRAPHY 147

Closely allied to this was the third of Wilkinson's
noteworthy characteristics, one which, for lack
of a better name I have called impatience. It was
impatience of no ignoble order. The man was so
seized of the nearness and reality of the unseen
spiritual world, so desirous of revelation, so anxious
for " Influx," that he suffered what amounted
to intellectual torment. Was there no prayer in
answer to which the veil would rise ? Was there
a trumpet call which would raze the dividing wall and
leave a practicable breach for the besieger ? Could
he find, even in unlikely places, some overlooked
hint, the secret key to the locked door ? The
ultimate object of his search was the coming down
from heaven of the New Jerusalem, the appointed
hour of which Swedenborg (and the Gospel long before
Swedenborg) had proclaimed as beyond human ken.
In the early days of his adoption of the Sweden-
borgian revelations, it seemed to him that the time
could not be long, and the service of standing and
waiting was proportionately severe. He sought
for signs which should support the urgency of his
hope, and sought them in strange places. There
was no path along what are regarded as the boundaries
of the unknown down which his footsteps might not
be traced : mesmerism, hypnotism, spiritualism,
with its apparatus of rappings, mediums, and
clairvoyance, healing as an immediate divine gift,
Fourrierism and T. L. Harrisism he explored them

148 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

all, with this impatience of his quest to drive him,
and discovered each to be a cul-de-sac in the maze
before he abandoned it.

But if this impatience was not ignoble, it was
quite unscientific. To educate the eye into that
of a Seer may make it the eye of the Poet, but will
never make it the eye of the Scientist. As Coleridge
has said, " Poetry is not the antithesis to prose,
but to Science " ; Science demands " the patience
for uncorrelated fragments, the endurance of in-
completeness." The uncorrelation of fragments was
the very subject of Garth Wilkinson's impatience ;
incompleteness was the very last thing which he found
it easy to endure. His message, couched in terms
of speculation, suffered. For, though he passed
his youth in days when speculation was popular
and, was, in consequence, gladly heard, the years
of his matured powers were years of scientific
expansion and advance, and a message conceived
in hostility to science met deaf ears or, at best,
a partial welcome. The world now rejects en-
thymemes and demands scientific proof of the
first two figures of your syllogism before it will
examine the third. But if from one point of view
he appears as the last of the Transcendentalists,
as the voice of one crying in the wilderness to a
small congregation, there is another view equally
possible and more just. Age, inevitable disappoint-
ment, and, above all, spiritual growth, quieted the

BIOGRAPHY 149

impatience we speak of. But, if he realized that
the mills of God grind slowly, Garth Wilkinson
suffered no doubt as to the thoroughness of their
working or the nature of their work. It might be
that the coming of the New Jerusalem could not
be hastened, that it could not even be discerned
as nearer, within the lifetime of man ; but it could
be furthered, the paths could be made straight
and the crooked places plain : and to this task he
addressed his pen almost literally to his last hour.
He found his task in the demonstration of corre-
spondences : he pursued and enriched it from his
great store of varied learning. One had spoken
of him as being " half a century before the intelli-
gence of the world." x If the estimate is correct,
the fruit of his mind and spirit will be found ready
for the taste and appetite of a generation who knew
not the man on earth : they would enjoy the banquet
the better for the presence of their host !

But he himself was under no illusion as to the
amount of acceptance accorded to him, and it troubled
him little if his listeners were few : his labour was,
so far as in him lay, to make them fit. Late in his
life he wrote to a friend : 2 " In a few thousand years,
the coming of the New Jerusalem may be discern-
ible in love to God and love to man : but a good
many cycles of World-overthrow may be gone through

1 Letter from Dr Pearson, April 7, 1878.

2 Letter to Mr John Marten, December 23, 1893.

150 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

in the interval." He has clearly learned the lesson
of patience as regards his great hope. Writing, at
the age of eighty-five, to his friend Mr John Thomson,
of Candorrat, Glasgow, a bookseller, he says,
(January 17, 1898) : " Do not attribute carelessness
to me for not writing to you earlier : I have been
so anxiously working at my unpopular book-making. "
He was not seeking his own glory.

Emerson wrote in his lecture on " Swedenborg,
or the Mystic " : " Swedenborg printed these scientific
works in the ten years from 1734 to 1744, and they
remained from that time neglected : and now,
after their century is complete, he has at last found
a pupil in Mr Wilkinson, in London, a philosopher
critic, with a co-equal vigour of understanding and
imagination comparable only to Lord Bacon's, who
has restored his master's buried books to the day,
and transferred them, with every advantage, from
their forgotten Latin into English, to go round the
world, in our commercial and conquering tongue.
This startling reappearance of Swedenborg, after
a hundred years, in his pupil, is not the least re-
markable fact in his history. Aided, it is said,
by the munificence of Mr Clissold, and also by his
literary skill, this piece of poetic justice is done.
The admirable preliminary discourses with which
Mr Wilkinson has enriched these volumes, throw
all the contemporary philosophy of England into
shade, and leave me nothing to say on their proper

BIOGRAPHY 151

ground." The praise is high but not unmeasured,
Laetus sum laudari me abs te, pater, a laudato
viro, but there is a praise still higher, of which
those who love him trust that he may be found
worthy. Garth Wilkinson esteemed himself a
" steward of the mysteries," and "it is required
of a steward that he shall be found faithful."

CHAPTER II

THE SWEDENBORGIAN

GARTH WILKINSON'S religion was the centre of his
life. All problems which presented themselves
to him were referred to it; his motives emanated
from it. He was early introduced to Christianity
and revelation as presented by Swedenborg, and
never did those doctrines fall upon ground better
suited for their reception and development. Prob-
ably with small thought concerning the momentous
meaning of his action, Wilkinson threw himself
at once into a thorough and exhaustive study of
" the writings," and was soon recognised as a born
translator. He was, indeed, from the first more
than a careful Tenderer of his original from one
language to another. We have seen in the preced-
ing chapter how early in his task he was struggling
for a mastery of those nuances of expression which
raise the drudge into the artist, and open out the
genius of an author to the mind of those who see
him in his new dress. As in the case with most
conscientious work, the effort brought more than
a creditable fulfilment of the immediate task in
hand. Not only did Wilkinson gain an intimacy

152

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 153

with the ipsisima verba of Swedenborg, probably
peculiar to himself in his own generation ; he acquired
in addition to this a readiness of expression, a facility
and virility of literary workmanship, which could
not have failed, if used upon themes less unpopular
than those he followed, to redound to his fame and
profit. But these were not what he sought.

A vision of the reality and nearness of spiritual
life through the exegesis of Swedenborg, was for him
a call to his life-work. What he himself saw must
be rendered visible to all men to the best of his
power. Having graduated through translation
into learning, he found himself possessed of gifts
which made his pen a valuable weapon. Armed
with it, he threw himself into a life of use, and
became the most versatile and original of Sweden-
borg' s disciples. His enthusiasm of spirit and power
of mind, were, indeed, so fitted to the task of his
self-devotion that to some he appeared more in the
position of a reincarnation than a follower of his
master. Swedenborg, buried in manuscript under
the dust of a century's neglect, seemed, to some at
least, to speak again. As Mr Emerson said l :
" This startling re-appearance of Swedenborg, after
a hundred years, in his pupil, is not the least
remarkable fact in his history."

A large shelf full of books are a public testimony
to the zeal with which Wilkinson utilized his talent

1 Representative men : " Swedenborg, or the Mystic."

154 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

in promulgating the truth as he saw and held it.
For him, the writings of Swedenborg enshrined
the latest word of revelation vouchsafed to man.
As he traced the word of God in the Sagas and in
the hieroglyphic writings of ancient Egypt in the
past, so, too, he confidently expected further revela-
tion which should supersede the message of Sweden-
borg, in its turn, in that future when man was
educated to receive it. For the present, however,
he must labour to have that message heard and
heeded. The works in which he sought that end
have been enumerated and characterized in the
foregoing chapter. A full critical appreciation of
their scope and execution would here be out of
place : it will be enough to say that they naturally
classify themselves as textual, explanatory and
developmental. The textual works, consisting
of translations and editions of Swedenborg's writings,
are the hand-books and classics of the New Church
at the present day, and are little likely to be super-
seded while the English language lasts. Within
the explanatory and developmental classes fall
Wilkinson's Introductions to the several works which
he translated and edited, and also the vast amount
of brilliant illustration which he bestowed upon
the far-reaching doctrine of Correspondences, in
which he traced examples of mystical correspondence
in the early writings of the race and in the occurrences
of his own day.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 155

But the effect of religion can only be partially
estimated by a consideration of a man's published
works. Its influence upon conduct and upon
character are fully seen and known only to the
Maker of man. Upon this subject it must suffice
to say that in his personal life, Wilkinson consistently
regulated his conduct by the lofty creed which he
professed, and that, having served his generation
faithfully and unremittingly, he fell on sleep.

Those who need an exposition of Swedenborg's
doctrines or an estimate of his value among the
religious teachers of the world will find them else-
where, and not least satisfactorily in the works
of Wilkinson. We are here rather concerned to
define the place of Wilkinson among his disciples,
and to give, so far as may be in his own words, his
views upon the subject to which he devoted his
life and by which he regulated his conduct.

The most important question which can be pro-
pounded to a Christain is that which Christ asked
his immediate followers : ' Whom say ye that
I am ? " The answer in Wilkinson's case is very
distinct. 1 " The Doctrine of the Divine Humanity
is clearly the highest doctrine of Heaven. The
glorification of that Humanity is by analogy the
rule of all progress, of all movement toward goodness.
There is not a single sphere of knowledge but is hollow
and unsubstantial if the recognition of that doctrine

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, December 2, 1846.

156 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

is not in it. It reconciles the Idealist to nature
and the Materialist to God. In a word, it gives
poor humanity a new and everlasting root in a fresh
covenant ; and is emphatically Religion. It is
a doctrine which I hope my dear friend will spend
and be spent for. The commonest knowledge and
the merest obeisance to duty best illustrate it.
He who makes no excursion into the sciences (using
the term in its modern limited sense) may find in
his own home here a deeper insight into Creation,
and windows more pellucid and truly crystalline,
than all the vagueness of self -sought things can
otherwise afford him. In a word, if you be so
minded, there is no need to study anything less
than humanity for the confirmation of the Divine
Humanity ; least of all to oppress the memory
with the broken pieces into which the creation
is every day reduced by the savans"

Writing to the same friend, he says 1 : "I am
sure I am a much more outside person than you, and
with much less faith ; thus I cleave to the historical,
as a Romanist to his dolls ; and when you talk of the
Christ, I feel pained at the definite article, because it
makes Christ Himself the only one I know of in-
definite. . . . I cannot make History movable to please
anybody ; and, as to what has occurred I imagine its
fact value to be inalienable. . . . The full influence
of the letter is as necessary as that of the Spirit."

1 June 1, 1849.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 157

Our last quotation on this vital point is evidently
in answer to a letter which is no longer extant.
However it shows Wilkinson's attitude toward
the doctrine of the Incarnation so distinctly that
it must find place here.

" * In your letter to me, I think you scientifically
wrong in evaporating the personality of Christ
in order to procure the universality of the Christ.
It is against nature, as much as against God. The
" old superstitious standpoint " is indeed the only
one ; the philosophical ' mathematical point ' is
no substitute for it. Life and limb, I adhere to
the former, and find it more and more confirmed
to me by all my studies and thoughts. You seem
to think that the human existence of Christ is not
his Divine Existence also ; and that the six-foot
measure of His person plainly demonstrates His
finiteness. ( I regard it differently, and see in the
whole universe nothing but a provision for giving
Omnipresence, Omnipotence and Omniscience to per-
fections, and not to sizes. But I will reserve what I
have to say on this until I have read your book."

St John's avowal, in Browning's " Death in the
Desert," is not more definite :

" I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it ;
And has so far advanced thee to be wise."

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, March 22, 1850.

158 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

The discussion between the friends did not end
here. We shall meet later with a continuation
of it on Mr James' part.

Holding these strong views upon the Incarnation,
it follows that Wilkinson held his Bible as directly
and fully inspired. He held also that much which
is obscure in the Bible had been specially revealed
to Emanuel Swedenborg, and that the Word in its
fulness was not granted to those who did not avail
themselves of this help. The relation in which he
viewed his Bible and " the writings " is compendi-
ously stated in the following letter * :

" I am weak and unable to complete a little work
I have on hand, so within the last fortnight I have
read through Swedenborg " De Coelo et Inferno," in
the original. I regard it as the Law-Revealing
Sinai of the Lord's Second Advent. I do not regard
Swedenborg' s works as subsidiary to the Word,
but as capable of being absorbed into it : so that
the internal Word will be all in all ; those Works
from without and from within subsisting to declare
it."

" This is not the place," he says in 1897, 1 to do
more than affirm that the Lord has opened the Word
to Emanuel Swedenborg by the revelation to him
of the internal sense within the letter which con-
sists of correspondences." Further statements of

1 Letter to Mr John Thomson, February I, 1306.

2 Preface to ' ' Voluspa/' p. ix.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 159

Wilkinson's views as to the relation which of
Swedenborg's works bear to the Bible, is given us
in another letter to the same friend. 1

" There is, indeed, more in the Psalms than
Swedenborg saw, and than any man but God-man,
the speaker of them, will ever see. But Swedenborg
alone has been commissioned to open the Psalms,
by being ordered by God-man to reveal the whole
doctrine of the Incarnation. That is what makes
Jesus Christ alone the opener of the Psalms. They
treat primarily of the whole state of Jesus, born a
natural man of Mary, born a Divine-Natural man
from God from Heaven, conquering universal Hell,
as man must conquer his own particular self -hell ;
and His (Jesus') conquest in fight against temptations,
enabling Man again to have free-will ; Jesus creating
the Divine-Natural Degrees in Himself, and there-
with becoming one with the Divine-Spiritual
and celestial Degrees, and thus one with the
Father.

" The Psalms recount all the horrors and terrible
states which Jesus' living with hell testifies. How
do we know this ? By the last chapter of Luke,
in which Jesus, on the way to Emmaus made it
known to mankind, ' These are the words which I
spake unto you while I was yet with you, how that
all things must be fulfilled which are written in the
law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms

1 Letter to Mr John Thomson, March 14, 1899.

160 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

concerning me.' None of this has come home to
Jesus until Swedenborg doctrinally opened it."

The opinions which Wilkinson held upon the
" infallibility " or degree of inspiration granted to
Swedenborg in his various writings is very carefully
stated in the following long letter written in answer to
an inquiry on the subject from a friend in America 1 :

" I appreciate your difficulties about the c in-
fallibility ' of the writings of Swedenborg ; I mean
about the claim of it for the theological writings.
For myself I dismiss the word, infallibility, into
the sphere of Papacy. Swedenborg never said he
was infallible. What he implied was that he was
over-ruled by the Lord his own will evidently
capable of the obedience necessary to write the
internal sense of the Word, as it could be received by
Mankind. No angel helped him; on the contrary,
the Angels often told him what poor matter he was
writing from their standpoint ; and he, guided by
the Lord, replied, that it was up to the level of the
intelligence of the receptive world in his day. This
debasing of the coin of internal truth, by amalgamat-
ing it with the copper of the natural man, and so
making it hard and substantial to us, though the
gold of heaven was interfered with, hardly comes
under the word, infallibility. The use of the
amalgamating process is produced by an infallible
Valuer, but the process itself is accommodation ;

1 Letter to iMrs Cockerell, May 5, 1890.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 161

and the coining MOIL will see more and more than
Swedenborg was commissioned to reveal ; so that
whoso believes in the finality of any statement
of the internal sense, will limit the ever advancing
glory of the Word. Nevertheless, every stage is
the Word of God, and is the internal sense of the
Word of God to us ; and we cannot be deceived in
regarding it as such.

" The Word of God is a various revelation. It
is God Himself, He tells us, in the beginning. No
man sees or knows it save as the daylight of the
divine Sun above the heavens. In the heavens
it is the Lord in and with the angels ; but as Himself
in a definite divine revelation, as a Book also. On
Earth it is a written perpetuated Book possessed
by man. All through, therefore, the Word has
two characters ; God's being and property in it ;
and the loan of it to man. This seems to connect
itself with the question How a divine commentary
on the Word, like the authoritative explication
vouchsafed to and through Swedenborg, is to be taken
as itself the Word, and co-real with the Word ?
If in any age it is all that man can know of the Word,
such Voice of God is the Word to men, external or
literal, internal or spiritual ; and doctrinal.

" The Word as God is thus separated from the
imparted Word as suited by divine mercy, and
therefore as still infinite, to the state of the heavens
and the churches. All authoritative expositions

162 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

of the Word, are, as Uses, co-real with the Word
for our regeneration : they are divinely true and
good. No exposition, however, is co-real with
the declaration, ' In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God.'

" As to our attitude of acceptance of Swedenborg's
infallibility, he himself is dead against it for the men
of heaven and the men of earth. In heaven he saw
a temple on which was written ' Now it is granted
to enter intellectually into the mysteries of faith.'
For us on earth he has said, ' Consider what I say
with reason, and with reason accept it.' These
declarations (which I put in my own words) are
incompatible with receiving this author's works
with blind faith. Though it must be added that
the affirmation or faith of love for what is good and
true is the way, truth and life of the needful under-
standing of the writings of the New Jerusalem.
To an Atheist neither of the above permissions
or recommendations applies. To him there are no
mysteries of faith, and no reception of any spiritual
instruction into the breast of reason. He is an
infallible selfhood.

" Now, banishing infallibility as a dangerous
apoplexy of the active mind, we come to Swedenborg's
theological writings, and to their claims. For
myself I regard those which he published as divine
books. ' The Arcana,' the 6 Four Leading Doctrines,'

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 163

the * Heaven and Hell,' ' Conjugal Love,' ' Last
Judgment,' ' Apocalypse Revealed,' and the rest.
For me they are temples of the Holy Spirit. Also
4 The Divine Love and Wisdom ' and Divine Pro-
vidence of course. There are errors of information
on natural subjects in them, because they were
written in the eighteenth century. These are of
no consequence to a lover of truth divine. But
they have the use of showing infallibility the door
politely.

" With regard to all these works, if you receive in
faith and love as much as commends itself to your
urgent uses for the bread of life, you do quite enough
to be in the great supper, without stumbling over
those things which do not commend themselves
to you.

"As to the large unpublished works, all readers of
them and of the ' Diary ' know how greatly luminous
and instructive they are. You are absolutely at
liberty to receive all the nourishment you can from
them. There will be innumerable differences of
reception among the readers of these also. Liberty
and Rationality will prefer different qualities and
quantities in the feast of reason and the flow of soul.
Among them I regard the ' Coronis,' ' The Athanasian
Creed,' ' The Divine Love and Wisdom ' from
4 Apocalypse Explained,' and the ' Diarium ' and
' Apocalypse Explained ' itself, as signal stores for
the nourishment and delight of coming JSons.

164 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

" Swedenborg's Life for the Use that he was to
fulfil has now to be taken into account. He rose
from Childhood to Manhood, and through Old Age,
as a prepared instrument ; ever mounting the divine
stairs of Jacob's Ladder ; and registered a new
sight from the higher light given through the foot-
steps of an adequate life. The next ages will see,
with new rays of truth-perception, that in the
long series of pre-theological works from small to
large, he was guided and further prepared for the
stages to come. A perpetual engrafting of next
and next faculties was accomplished on him by the
Great Gardener. No infallibility here either; but
a constant reception of principles and depths, and
rejection of old ways and appearances. So each
work was, as it were, a generation in itself, and had
to die in its methodic body, that the proximate
spiritual might come forth, and continue the ascent.
If the so-called scientific works are seen with an open
mind, they are spiritual powers and exercises and
far off cognitions of theology and of the Divine Word.
This is the case with Swedenborg's ' Principles of
Chemistry,' in which he has laid the foundation-
stone of a godly mineral temple, transparent from
top to bottom, which cannot even be dreamt of by
the modern commercial medical and culinary chemist.
Higher still he mounts in his ' Principia.' His work,
(posthumous) on ' Generation ' is ground so new,
but closely following anatomy, physiology and

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 165

living and loving Sex, that it must be an age before
any number of readers will want its instructions.
Like all the series, it is out of the mind and heart
and interests of the end of the Nineteenth Century.
It tells the World, as it has never been told before,
that we, who object to Divine Revelation, live in
an era of mere imagination, and in a feminine age.
With respect to this saying let it be observed that
no derogation of woman is implied here ; but the
author means that one half of the soul is predominant,
where on the other hand the masculine and feminine
forces should be in even ratios, balanced and be-
getting in the strength of the heavenly conjugment.

" Coming to the ' Economy ' and the ' Animal
Kingdom,' the veil of nature grows thinner chapter
by chapter, and the correspondence of the organs
of the body to the faculties and uses of the Mind
and Spirit lightens forth in inductions and deduc-
tions and make organization transparent ; and
instead of the skeleton being seen as in Rontgen's
Rays, the spiritual body is visible in the shape in
which good and evil will present it after death.
All these are therefore preparatory and preliminary
treatises on Heaven and Hell. To single one piece
of their daylight, we would mention the Doctrine
of Respiration, the Life and Union of the Body and
the Spirit, and the bodily fulcrum and basis of the
emancipation of the intellect as an instrument of
regeneration. Space permits no mention of Sweden-

166 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

borg's great discoveries in the region of the Brain.
They are the culmination of his natural spiritual
philosophy of the human body.

" Such a series and order as we have sketched,
puts infallibility out of Court. Papacy is a Mummy
in the swathings of its infallibility, and though the
wrappages are many, and the invention curious,
yet the sameness of death and immobility is written
upon the throne on which the Papal Corpse sits.
In the New Church writings, issuing as they do
from the living God, ' behold I make all things new,'
is the eternal protest against the invasion and fixity
of time and space into the Courts of the infinite.
A new heaven and a new earth are our prophecy.

' We come last to say a word on your difficulty
with regard to the " Worship and Love of God " ;
a work intermediate between Swedenborg's natural-
spiritual books, and the theological writings. You
would ask, Is the account of Man's first Creation
true ? Can it be relied on ? Crucified by Infalli-
bility, by infallible modern medical scientism, it
can only yield up the ghost. But in and after so
doing, it must be seen as not only natural, but, like
our Lord's body, as a first state of divine natural.
Swedenborg would never affirm his beautiful thought,
of the Two Trees of Life, to be a literal fact. It is
part of a great Mythology which all his previous
works constitute. It belongs to Ark and Emblem,
to Yggdrasil, to the trees of Life in the Word, in

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 167

Genesis and Revelation ; and received as life-giving
by the spiritual intellect, the Non-sense of it is the
pure mind and reason working out the problems of
science with a power given from above. Age by
age the sense, quite novel, and quite unselfish and
unsensual, will come, when the divine series in the
Work is admitted and its place in all the Works from
the ' Principles of Chemistry ' to ' The Arcana,' is
taken into the account. The Lord's manifestation to
Swedenborg in East London was very nigh at hand
to him when he wrote this nonsensual Drama and
Oratorio.

" It occurs to me to supplement this, which I
may perhaps print in Morning Light, with the
suggestion, that God, well called by Paul the * Father
of Lights,' from the beginning has not helped
Mankind directly by imparting to him any natural
Sciences. It may be a rule that He reveals to us
nothing that we can find out for ourselves. The
celestial wisdom of the Adamic Church is no infringe-
ment of this order. Its so-called science, summed
up in the knowledge of correspondences, was of heavenly,
not of natural things : and even in primeval Egypt
the knowledges were such as could only be attained
by Revelation ; for they were the absolute spiritual
fitnesses of the external worship of the Church to
the holy states of the Ancient Men, to God in them.
In our remainders from these revelations, the orienta-
tion of temples, and other prescripts, are not of

168 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

natural science, but of primeval revelation. This
condition, that we are necessitated to discover all
natural scientifics for ourselves is a personal basis of
our freewill ; for we should soon lose our wholesome
love of discovery with its compensated toils, if our
second sight, and third sight, and manifold sights of
nature were all shown to us gratuitously. And our
intelligence would dwindle into animality. With
this condition of invention, sciences are for ever and
for ever imperfect, and as they can become more
and more perfect by our diligence, our understanding
minds are created by the daily instruction we receive
of our own nothingness. For the end of natural
science also is that whatever is good and true in it,
is, in spite of all we have just said, a direct gift of
the loving economy of the Almighty."

In addition to his great reverence for the works
of Swedenborg, Wilkinson was possessed of an
affection almost personal for the man who died forty
years before he himself was born. There was no
detail of Swedenborg's life which was too trivial
for careful investigation : he even collected and
published all the available material for a memoir
of Jasper Svedborg, Bishop of Skara, the Seer's
father.

" This is a memorable day," he wrote on January
26, 1896, to his friend Dr Boericke of San Francisco,
" the two hundred and sixth anniversary of the birth
of Emanuel Swedenborg. Ten days ago, I started

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 169

reading ' De Ccelo et Inferno ' in Latin, my dear
Samuel H. Worcester's fine Edition ; and I finished
the perusal this morning. How much is gained sug-
gestively from the original. ... To read it is to
know that you will be before the great White Throne.
It is an ' awfully good book.' '

He had the courage of his convictions and would
have no suppression of facts, or eclecticism, where
Swedenborg was concerned. 1

" I should be grieved if any attempt to exclude the
dreams from your " Monumenta Swedenborgiana "
were to succeed. They are documents which cannot
now be suppressed ; and the quietest way in which
they can come forth is in your large Volumes, where
they will assume no disproportionate importance.
Failing that, they will probably issue in a portable,
perhaps in a pamphlet form, and have an unduly
wide circulation. It would be an awkward fact
for the world to handle, if the Society tried to sup-
press the document.

i4 Those who think Swedenborg mad will think
him no madder for ' The Dreams ' : those who are
capable of finding him not mad will speedily see in
'The Dreams' a step in the marvellous ladder of
his upraising.

" I remember well when I warmly and earnestly
advocated the publication of the 'Diarium', with
nearly the whole Society against me, many earnest

1 Letter to Dr Tafel, July 2, 1877.

170 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

men were terrified, and one said, ' That book, if
published, will disband the Church.' The Lord's
Church is not to be disbanded by the whole Truth.
I pray you all, fear not ; this book, even if it open
controversy, will be no stumbling block to any
whom it really concerns. The Age is opening fast
to a reverent, careful and tolerant study of such
phenomena as those indicated in c The Dreams.'

" May I add, as an old friend and deep well-
wisher to the Society, an earnest hope that you will
be commissioned at once to proceed to the European
part of your work, the publication of all the Docu-
ments in the originals. We owe this to the world
and to posterity. Make any use you like of this
letter."

It may be remembered that in 1836, Wilkinson's
first reading at the British Museum was in a History
of Philosophers and that he noticed with disapproval
the absence of Swedenborg's name from among
them. Sixty years later, we find him delivering
a firm verdict in the same sense. 1

" You ask me, who, in my opinion, is the greatest
Philosopher of the present time ? My answer is,
Emanuel Swedenborg. His writings recognize and
adequately demonstrate all the faculties of man, and
see them in their connexion from the highest to the
lowest as the creations of a Divine love and wisdom.

" The Philosophy lies in the veritable Revelation

1 Utter to Mrs Keeley, March 21, 1896.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 171

that human love and wisdom exist in their integrity
only in proportion as the rule of higher and inner
faculties becomes established in human life, in-
dividual and social ; so that the relation between
God and man is continually established and re-
established.

" The two factors of this are God's gifts, both of
them, 1. A Word of God, inspired by Him, and
plainly full of His Commandments and Laws.
2. A conscience sensitive to the Light of this
Word. Obedience is the Use of this conscience
in daily Duties.

" These dry statements cover and include a divine
Philosophy which has new eyes given to it for the
discernment of all things hitherto deemed mysterious.
They are windows to which the natural and spiritual
worlds freely open.

" This philosophy will not pass away, but with
the reformation and regeneration of mankind, age
after age, it will become more new and glorious,
never forgetting its past, yet living in its present,
and not anticipating its future.

" The meaning of this is a divine Church, the
religious and secular pulpits of which will grow
out of the life of Emanuel's Philosophy."

The high value which Wilkinson attached to
Swedenborg's works led him to reverse various
generally accepted judgments. 1

1 Letter to Miss Marsh, January 28, 1839.

172 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

" To my mind the insertion of extracts from
Swedenborg spoils the context of any other man
it so completely surpasses all other writing, in its
clear-burning tranquility of brightness."

He finds even St Augustine fail when tried by
this measure. 1

" This morning I have read Chapter VII. of
St Augustine's Confessions. He is a sublime Genius,
full of great and true intuitions, but which are not
on the rational plane. It is strange to compare him
with the substantial lesson of Swedenborg, learnable
through him by all the world."

His very love-letters teemed with allusions to
Swedenborg. This is not wonderful between lovers
who were studying " The Writings " together, and
who sought counsel, warning and encouragement
from those pages. 2

" I am very much pleased with your view of
Swedenborg's power of convincing. It is mild, but
how irresistible, like all mild things, or all things
which have in them Love, Spiritual mildness. How
do I feel that all my warmth and fury is not strength;
that it is weakness ! that if thou or I wish to be
strong it must be by renouncing the strength of
selfish passion, by commencing unselfish action I "

Wilkinson's letters contain very frequent avowals
of his religious belief ; as a propagandist, he never

1 Letter to Mrs Wilkinson, September 3, 1884.

2 Letter to Miss Marsh, November 6, 1838.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 173

shrank from testifying. Two examples of this
must not be omitted. Writing to Professor Victor
Rydberg to acknowledge a present of the Swedish
scholar's " Undersokningar i Germanisk Mythologi "
in 1890 he says :

" I have some idea of attempting a review of
your Book on some principal points ; perhaps in a
little Book. The Northern Mythology has to me a
sacred character, and I have long seen that ' Voluspa '
is a tradition of holy things. I am a confirmed
and ever more confirmed disciple of Swedenborg,
who stands for me in the brain behind * Heim-
skringlas Panna ' as the spirit of the North coming
over the whole World ; and as even more than
the reunion of the two ends of the Aryan Race
as the Uniter of all the Races under the Divine Word.
I say this to declare where I am as your very grate-
ful pupil and admirer."

In the last of his letters to Mr Emerson which
have escaped destruction, he is lamenting their
failure to meet in London, in spite of many efforts
on both sides ; and giving his special reasons for
having wished to meet his old friend and helper,
he says 1 :

" In these last days of the Supremacy and Papacy
of the Human Mind as Emperor, I wanted so very
much to talk to you, and assault you a little, about
Swedenborg, for whose proximate extension you

1 Letter to Mr R. W. Emerson, January 3, 1874.

174 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

have done so much. Years ago, when I looked at
him as a great phenomenon mentally, I reckoned
him among the World's great men. Now I see him
as not among (? them) : but as a Divine Functionary,
having in all he does and says a purely spiritual
tendency. So I look upon him as a God-given
pressure of common-sense upon all the relations
of public and private life, which he derives from
the Divine Man, through the Human Heavens,
and Spiritual World, into Humanity in all its bosoms,
and through every stroke of all its businesses. For
this, the coming first, and then the Word and Revela-
tion of the Divine Man is necessary ; and this is
the thing which Swedenborg's mind was opened at
the top to teach.

;c In the light of all this I confess myself a Sweden-
borgian, a name which, a quarter of a century ago,
I should have repugned.

" The opposite to it, involving, as it does, blank
ignorance of the life after death which we are so
soon to enter, appears to me untenable against all
the dearest holiest interests of men and women.

" I know your generosity will excuse my
dogmatism."

Wilkinson's statement that during the later
" fifties " he would have disclaimed being a " Sweden-
borgian " needs some qualification and brings us
naturally to consider his position as a member of
the " New Church."

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 175

The difficulty appears to be one of terms. To the
world at large a " Swedenborgian " is a follower of
Swedenborg, a member of a religious body terming
itself " The New Church." Among those who
claimed membership in the New Church were two
classes : firstly, those who segregated themselves
from other communities and claimed to possess,
as a Church, Orders and Sacraments ; these may
not unjustly be called Sectarians ; secondly, those
who claimed to extract an internal sense from Divine
Writ by means of the revelation which they believed
to have been granted to Swedenborg and to have
been transmitted in " The Writings." These latter
did not necessarily find their position inconsistent
with membership of other religious bodies or the
recognition of the Orders and Sacraments of those
bodies. For them the " New Church " was a
spiritual body destined to grow in strength and
purity by reformation and education due to influx
from on high.

It cannot be denied that Wilkinson early in
his life was very ready to become, if he did
not actually become, a member of the first class
which we have defined. He was anxious for
example, to be married in a " New Church "
place of worship and abandoned his intention
partly on account of the inconvenience involved
and partly to avoid giving pain to those dear to
him.

176 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

But shortly before that time we find him writing
to his fiancee in these terms. 1

" What you say about the Sacrament is very
interesting to me ; and you shall, according to your
expressed wish, read me what you have been reading
and what Swedcnborg says on that subject. I am
beginning to feel regrets of a stronger and stronger
kind that I attend so little to the forms of Religion
and the Church. These regrets, I think, will embody
themselves some day in the practice of frequenting
Divine Service and partaking of the Holy Sacrament.
But at present, from my neglect of these offices
during my whole life (save only my school-life, when
they were compulsory and far too hardly required),
I feel an inability to set myself about performing
them." If, as seems likely, the Sacrament of the
Eucharist according to the rites of the Church of
England is intended, Wilkinson's sectarianism was
not, even at its bitterest, very bitter. Seven years
later, however, with greater experience of the two
classes of the " New Church," he expresses himself
with no uncertain sound. 2

" So Miss is in hot water ! We do not

wonder at it, and it seems to be a warning to us all
not at present to interlock ourselves very closely
with any sect or party, and perhaps not to leave
that in which we were born. I am tempted to think

1 To E. A. M., June 17, 1839.

2 Letter to Mr Henry James, September 18, 1847.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 177

that the times are not free enough to allow men to
associate together on mere doctrinal ground, but
that if they do this they will coagulate together, or
conglutinate, and lose the liberty of action and of
thought. This has been my own experience, and
I am now, therefore, anxious to belong to no party
as a Community but the Church of England, and,
by my presence there, to contribute an individual
mite toward making that name latitudinarian enough
for the millions of diverse spirits who are compre-
hended under it already. The same advice I tender
to others, to be what their fathers were before them,
and to labour to improve their ancestral estate.
Then, when the better day dawns, the spiritual
earth will be fat and fit for the crop which is that
day to be sown in it, over all climates. But on this
subject, see the 24th Chapter of Matthew, from
the 14th to the 28th verse."

This aversion to joining the " sect or party "
calling themselves " The New Church " was highly
characteristic of him. In every movement he
wielded a free lance : his transcendentalism (of
the New England type) made him an individualist.
Never hesitating to raise voice or use pen in the
most unpopular causes, heedless of what obloquy,
contumely and controversy he might himself arouse,
he yet possessed a caution which saved him from
responsibility for what others might say, write or do.

But if the preceding quotation illustrates his

178 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

attitude towards the " New Church " with which
he could not ally himself, that which follows relates
to the New Church, the Heavenly Jerusalem whose
descent from above was his dream and great desire. 1
" I cannot doubt that at this day the New Church
embraces all that is good and true in all men, creeds
and worships ; and that so far as any man is on the
road to heaven, so far he is in the New Church, and
not in the Old. This certainty gives one a different
aim from the simple conversion of congregations
from one name to another ; and might tend to make
one regard all existing things as forms which might
be regenerated into truths without being wrenched
from their individual places. How much richer a
Church will be which embraces the varieties now
shadowed forth by the different Religions and Sects ;
than one which tyrannically imposes itself upon all !
In time and through the myriad-fold arm of circum-
stances wielded by Providence, the fundamental
truth of the Divine Humanity and newness of Life,
will no doubt be accepted by all Creeds, and will
re-animate the Creeds, which will then simply
convey the Divine Truths downwards in so many
channels fitted to the great and small divisions of
the Human Race. And the enlarging charity which
shall then appear, will interpret for good, and adopt
as of the New Church, many a doctrine which is
now repudiated merely from a hard habit of judging

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, February 28, 1847.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 179

one set of words by another to which it seems
heterogeneous."

Wilkinson maintained and even strengthened his
connection with the Church of England through the
rest of his life, attending its Services and availing
himself of its highest act of worship. Probably
his readiness to proclaim himself a Swedenborgian in
1874, though he would have repugned the title
earlier in his life, was (in part at least) due to a more
accurate view of Swedenborgianism in the public
mind. His assumption of the name certainly did
not connote a deeper Sectarianism. But it must
not be inferred that Wilkinson's attitude absolved
him from a very active part in those propagandist
works of which he approved. The facts are far
otherwise. He was for many years from 1839 a
working member of the Printing Committee of " The
Society for Printing and Publishing the (Theological)
writings of Swedenborg," instituted in London 1810 ;
and in 1844, he was largely concerned in founding
" The Swedenborgian Association," becoming its
first Secretary. The special function of this Associa- ^
tion was the editing and translation of Swedenborg's
works and manuscripts, " written anteriorly to the
opening of his spiritual sight in the year 1745." This
was a matter very near to Wilkinson's heart, for he
held that his author must be studied chronologically
if a man would learn the degrees of development
through which the scientist passed into the seer ;

180 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

and it may be said that he found his life-work in
preparing the material for such a study, in demon-
strating and illustrating the theory of correspondence,
and in striving to widen the accepted view of the
occurrence and scope of divine inspiration. Those
who read the original Prospectus of the Sweden-
borgian Association can scarcely miss the hand of its
Secretary in it. How much Wilkinson expected
from the new body appears in the following letter * :
; ' The Laws of the latter (the Association) are just
completed and by the next steamer I hope to send
you a copy of them ; when, if you decidedly approve,
we shall look to have what support you can fairly
award us. That much may be done now, and in
the way of a New Method in Knowledge, I, for one,
have not the slightest doubt. It seems to me that
when a state perishes, through a decadent process,
there is, at the end, a reversion to the principles
of such a state (a 4 fleeing to the mountains ') and
an appropriation of them in the new principles of a
new state. Besides, such principles are used at
that time for the purposes of justice and judgment ;
they are the marks from which the departure dates,
the measures of its length, and the judges of its
pretexts. Now in this way, as it seems to me that
the Scientific state is actually consummated, must
we not refer back to the Works of the presumed
Father of Inductive Science, viz., ' the great Lord

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, March 3, 1845.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 181

Bacon,' and see what can he got out of him for our
purposes ; in what light his genius will acknowledge
his modern children, and a few such points ? I
propose therefore studying his Works with a view to
this scheme of proceeding, and endeavouring to
measure the moderns by him and him by Swedenborg.
Probably I can achieve no more than a few sugges-
tions put boldly forward, which, however, would be
enough to excite thought and to jog people out of
some of their ruts. It is manifest that we want a
Novum Organon Scientiarum, and I have an increasing
confidence that the germs which will evolve it are
all contained in Swedenborg's Theological Writings,
and this in the very simplest, or highest, form."

Wilkinson's use of terms was not unfrequently
arbitrary ; it appears that here he anticipates that the
Association was to fulfil some age of Science by its
publications. The result does not appear to have
followed, for Bacon was not brought in as judge.
Swedenborg's earlier writings show him fully abreast
of Science so far as it existed in his day, and his
speculative vigour is beyond question. His follower
was inclined to regard him as prophetic in this regard
also, and to read into Science some internal meaning
from Swedenborg. Certainly a " clearing house "
of the sciences, an assistance in the correlation of
scientific discovery, is a desideratum recognized
more generally than it was sixty years ago, but still
far from attainment.

182 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

But it must be confessed that there are occasions
upon which it is difficult to " localize " Wilkinson
accurately. Such an occasion is seized upon by
Mr Henry James in the letter from which the follow-
ing extract is taken. The letter illustrates the true
friendship between the two men, the faithfulness
and outspoken criticism of the writer, the implied
tolerance of that criticism on the part of the receiver.
Mr James is acknowledging a copy of " The Human
Body in its Connexion with Man," a book which
Wilkinson had dedicated to him. 1

" I have read the great book, you may be sure
with eyes enormously expanded, and mouth in
sympathy. Such a tremendous volley of strength
and brilliancy lifting my name into the astonished
air ! The reaction was instantaneous. I said to
my wife, ' This is sport to Wilkinson, no doubt ;
for great men like to show their magnanimity by
condescension to small ones ; but it is death to me.
I shall buy a small place in some sheltered nook
of the Hudson River, and never let my unworthy
head be seen in the city. Such an honour put upon
one binds him to keep the peace evermore. Farewell
henceforth all my intellectual activities, all my
lectures, newspaper squibs and all ! ' But the
tumult is now subsiding, and I am able to read the
post-dedicatory portion of the volume with attention.

" All your part of the book is absolutely marvellous-

1 Letter from Mr Henry James, September 9, 1851.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 183

I find all readers to agree in this. They say that
you exhaust human power in the direction of
rhetoric, and that there is no use of looking for
fine writing after this. Your thought is so organic,
you think so concretely, that one feels, when in
intellectual converse with you, as if he were struggling
in the folds of huge icthyosauri, or dancing a jig
with gleesome megatheria. It would be a monstrous
compliment to the world at large to say that you
were ever going to be a popular writer. Scholars
will rejoice in you as in abundance of hid treasure,
but only in a better world than this will you become
known to the multitude. And there seems a just
Providence in this. If you were well recognized,
at your worth as a writer, you would so dwarf
all our existing celebrities as to have the whole
field of literature to yourself, and extinguish every
publisher but him who put forth your book. You
will have, you must have inevitably, a great fame ;
but it will be ratified only by the very best voices of
the race. I see the book is advertised to be re-
printed by a Philadelphia house, the head of which,
Mr Welford tells me, is in London at present, and
I presume therefore in communication with you.
The advertisements may, however, be merely a
feeler of the public pulse.

" The matter of the book, too, is glorious, for the
most part. The whole truth of it, as exhibiting the
loving co-partners of spirit and matter, is beyond

184 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

price, and the suggestiveness of every page accord-
ingly is unequalled in my experience. But I confess
to some disappointment too, owing probably (nay,
I am sure), to my own dulness. That is, I do not
see precisely to what practical end you would make
all this correspondential lore avail. I know well
enough when I read Swedenborg, what the bearing
of all his disclosures in relation to correspondence,
is. I know that they all tend to the glorification of
the Lord, or divine natural man. But I do not
find myself in as full or flowing sympathy with you.
Then again I am additionally bothered every little
while with sinewy strokes of orthodoxy, which
would delight John Calvin : not that good orthodoxy
which seizes firmly the Kernel of the truth and
throws away the shell, but apparently a sort that
insists upon the shell as equivalent to the kernel.
I am sure, I repeat, that I do not understand you,
and I will wait therefore for subsequent readings
to sharpen my wit. But, for the present, it appears
to me from the face of your book either that you
have some knowledge which you do not impart to
other men in relation to the Christ, or else that you
differ toto ccelo from Swedenborg concerning Him.
You employ habitually such remarkably Calvinistic
language about the Christ and it often seems so
consciously and wilfully introduced that I am
dumbfounded, and expect to hear the bones of good
old Swedenborg rattle with indignation. The mis-

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 185

chief of the old Church Christianity is, he says,
that they conceive of the Lord only as a Person, or
that they have no conception of the divine humanity,
but from person, which conception is fatal to the
spiritual understanding of the scriptures. I fully
abide by this confession. Now you, as it strikes
me, delight in mystifying the simple disciple of
Swedenborg, and heaping all kinds of tacit contempt
upon those principles of biblical interpretation which
guided him in denying the divinity of the letter.
I have no doubt, all the while, that you have a certain
justification in your own knowledge ; but, having it,
hang it, why don't you let common people know
what it is ? I am unfeignedly mystified by every
word you utter on the subject of Christianity. And
yet your utterances are so extremely pronounced,
.and portentous of concealed will, that I dare not
treat them as I would those of a feeble man, and
dismiss them from all regard. I want to know your
philosophic standpoint, the source whence you
derive such unprecedented and (an illegible word)
theologic aplomb. For heaven's sake, therefore,
tell me, or (better than this) tell the public,
in some brief review of a book or what
not, how you understand the science of the
Christ."

Mr James appears here to lay his finger upon a
weak point in his friend's method of work, upon
something akin to what we have, in earlier pages,

186 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

characterized as " impatience." Writing of the
deepest subjects from a point of view between that
of the theologian and the philosopher, it was in-
cumbent upon Wilkinson, if he would carry his
reader with him, to establish his position constantly
by careful definition of the terms which he employed.
" The light dove, piercing in her easy flight the air,
and perceiving its resistance, imagines that flight
would be easier still in empty space. It was thus
that Plato left the world of sense, as opposing so
many hinderances to our understanding. He did
not perceive that he was making no progress by
these endeavours, because he had no resistance as
a fulcrum on which to rest or to apply his powers,
in order to cause the understanding to advance. It
is indeed a very common fate of human reason first
of all to finish its speculative edifice as soon as
possible, and then only to inquire whether the
foundation be sure." x We may acquit Wilkinson
of want of industry, as we may acquit him of
want of conscience : but his impatience to be
in the thick of his work not seldom made his
progress from ill-defined premises to the loftiest con-
clusions unconvincing because logically unscientific.
The reader shares the writer's joy in ampler ethers
and more divine airs, but fails to join him there,
because the initial stages of the climb took place in
a fog, as though the early steps, though sufficient

1 Kant : Introduction to the " Critique of Pure Reason," p. 4.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 1ST

for the thinker and writer, were not cut deep
enough to guide and support his follower, the
reader.

From time to time, Wilkinson was dissatisfied with
the tendencies taken on by the movement in which
he associated, as the earnest individualist in every
movement is sure to be. 1

" We take in the New Era and are exceedingly
diverted and edified by it. ... There is in it not
only faith but life, which latter element the New
Church movement now lacks entirely. It is not
that there is not all the Truth in Swedenborg that
we ever contended for, but in his followers it is
unprogressive and destitute of hope and charity,
and therefore their state is liable to be superseded
by any real manifestation, however low, which goes
to the Tables and hearts of the people. I find, in
fact that the old spirit of learning, its exclusiveness
and cruel Latinization, rules just now in Theologicals
and Spirituals ; for the philosophers, parsons and
atheists will have it that nothing low shall enter into
the category of Revelation, and that Revelation shall
not go to the low ; whereas all the meaning of
Revelation is something told in their own way to
people who cannot understand things otherwise.
Consequently, Revelation is a perpetual descent ;
and, until it has come to the million, and Smith
Thomson, Noakes & Co. have each a private reveal-

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, May 19, 1853.

188 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

ment in addition to the public Gospel, the scope of
Revelation cannot be complete."

There were, too, doctrinal difficulties, the less
easy to be borne because they existed between
friends. The letter in which the following long
extract occurs was evidently an answer to one in
which Mr James pointed out discrepancies between
the views of Wilkinson and his friend Mr Augustus
Tulk, M.P., as expressed in the work of the latter. 1

" I forwarded your letter to Mr Tulk as soon as
it arrived, since which I have seen him two or three
times, and noticed his satisfaction at the corre-
spondence thus begun. You have certainly given
me a hard thrust or two, in order to rouse me to
show fight, but I am too old a bull in that arena to
be provoked in this matter to a c ferocious rejoinder.'
As for a " leisurely rejoinder," which you also desire
by your lancinating attack to produce, it shows that,
like a Queen of Spain, you desire a prolonged spectacle
of my agonies. But I cannot gratify you in this
either.

" My present course of work and study is so alien
to the subject, that I candidly confess I cannot
bring my mind to treat it in that order which you
require. Furthermore, to my own conceit at least,
I have actually gone through it ; and though I can
make it, to a certain extent, a matter of recollection,
I cannot make it a matter of thought. There is

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, September 2, 1845.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 189

nothing in it which excites me to activity, nothing
but is as well comprehended when the intellect is
asleep as (when it is) awake. When I catch myself
in any part of its mill-horse round, I say to myself,
like the London vulgar boys, ' There you are at
your old rigs again ' : and then I bridle up in a
moment, and perhaps blush slightly to think that
I consumed two mortal years in such occupation.
And when dear Mr Tulk (for whom I have a sincere
respect) is at his gravest, I am unable to look at him,
for fear my slippery mouth should fail me (se dif~
funderet), and I should give way to enormous
laughter : so I am debarred of his direct presence,
and eat my handkerchief obliquely. It is impossible
to convert such a state into ' ferocity. 5 You see
what you ask when you require a leisurely rejoinder ? "
" But, as I should vex you if I left matters thus,
I will go a little into my own history as connected
with Mr Tulk's views. When I first began to read
Swedenborg, it gave a new impetus to my whole
mind, and made me desire to inform myself upon
many subjects and many authors of whom I had
never thought before. And, among other things,
I fell into the very natural idea that there was a
certain parallelism between various books of meta-
physics and the writings of Swedenborg, and that
I ought to know something about the former in order
to appreciate our Author correctly. Then I had
no sooner entered the pale of ' the readers ' than

190 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

I found a number of eddies of controversy, all
blowing away without any prospect of a calm.
These circumstances together led two or three of
us into rationating about the existence of matter
and a number of other such mistaken questions.
We bought Berkley, and, finding how dexterous he
was, and (above all) that those who objected to
him did not understand him (though they were
substantially right, for all that, and perhaps were
right for not understanding), we thought we had
got a pearl of great price and were a chosen few, for
whom alone the veil of Isis was about to be uplifted.
About this time we came across Mr Tulk's little
Book, and now our satisfaction was at its height.
As I was the most enthusiastic Berkleyan of the lot,
I applied to Mr Tulk for a number of his Books, and
by this means made his acquaintance. Great as
was my wonderment at Swedenborg, it seemed to
me that Mr Tulk's views alone conducted me into
the sweetest recesses of the New Church writings,
and I spent weeks and months and years in lingering
around these fancied spots. It is true that I some-
times had a hard battle to assure myself that they
were truths and not potent conjurations ; but the
will to be comfortable and their pleasant imagery
were persistent enough to maintain me in this state
for a long time. During this time, I read through the
* Arcana Ccelestia,' and seized upon all the passages
I could find confirmatory of my then views ; these,

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 191

however, were few, far between and so far unsatis-
factory that even the best of them required induction
and interpretation in order to make them give the
desired evidence, without a good deal of law-giving
skill, they would easily have been witnesses on the
other side. This was awkward, and it sometimes
struck me that it was not honest to gather strength
in this way. On the other hand, the passages clean
against Tulkism were tens of thousands, but this
cloud of witnesses was modestly put out of court,
under the pretext that their utterances were for the
sensually minded, while on the other hand, the
former class of passages contained direct statements
of principles, and were to govern all the rest. Had
I had the misfortune to be the inventor of the scheme,
probably my amour propre and my love of offspring
might have carried me through even the rude shock
of facts like these ; but anything short of parental
love must break down under such circumstances.
A brat so misbegotten, and manifesting this so fear-
fully by his contrariety to all honest opinion, might
soon expect to be left by his mere friends, although
his Mother should still cling to him. I began, there-
fore, instinctively to loosen myself from these views,
prompted thereto by a secret consciousness that
they and Swedenborg were irreconcilable.

" About this time it might be that I strongly felt
that if the Tulkish doctrines were true, God was
still unrevealed, and not the less so because a

192 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

sensation of Him once was extant in the world,
and His image was in the human mind at the present
day. For, if the sensation and the image came by
transflux through man, and therefore were mere
representatives, I then had the horrifying contra-
diction of a purely passive or puppet god, of which
heaven, hell and man managed the strings and
pulled the wires. To such a god I could not pray,
for he was, in the very worst sense, the work of men's
hands. It would have been spiritual idolatry of the
lowest kind, that is, the deification and worship of
self ; a thing which heathenism only symbolized, but
which, with such a god and such a doctrine, would
have been converted into a fact. I left Tulkism
upon this point, and acceded to the Scripture declara-
tion that the Lord is the First and the Last, and to
Swedenborg's doctrine that He is present to man
both mediately and immediately, and that He alone
is Heaven.

" But, although I had thus got rid of this peculiar
form of Socinianism, the Berkleyan doctrine still
adhered to me, and perhaps I have some remnants
of it in my mind even now. I regard it as a logical
circle of which the falsity is most easily demonstrated
by the fact of impotence. It is evidently out of
the order of nature, because it is a thing which can
do nothing, and can generate nothing, and therefore
has no right to exist. It is precisely like our self-
hood in this ; and, what is curious, it makes us

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 198

doubtful of the existence of each other, and isolates
us hopelessly, proving here again where it comes
from. Whether or not it is worse than materialism
were a piece of casuistry hard to determine. I
believe a set of Berkeleyans would be lazier dogs than
the same number of materialists ; perhaps as Hindoo
Atheists compared with French ones.

" But I was not satisfied to get rid of Berkeley
simply on the ground of fruitlessness ; but, by
investigating some of his leading aphorisms in the
light of the New Church Doctrine, I found I had
abundant reason to refuse to start with him through
his Logic. His whole book rests, I think, upon the
answer which he makes Philonous give to the question,
' Can anything but a sensation be like a sensation ? '
and to which answer poor silly Hylas of course
assents. I do not, and the Book, therefore, with
me, stops there ; or, like a burst bubble, goes into
an incredibly small compass. Consider here these
truths Man is not Life, but a recipient of Life.
The Lord alone is Life, etc., etc., etc.

" Having got so far, by the merciful course of
Providence I was led to study Swedenborg's Scientific
Works, and, by this means, I furnished the lower
storeys of my mind with positive doctrines of nature,
in the room of that flatulent stuff which I had once
considered to be a just account of the Creation.
Thus also I saw the stages through which Sweden-
borg's mind was empowered from on high to arrive

N

194 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

at those doctrines which are given in his Theology,
and were as far as possible removed from all we call
metaphysics. I saw that to palm Tulkism upon
Swedenborg would be to violate his whole mind and
education, just as much as to violate the Doctrines
of the New Jerusalem. I saw also the reason why
the followers of Swedenborg were not so well able
to repel attacks and see through trivial difficulties
as they ought to be ; viz., that they did not train
their minds from the beginning to follow the flexible
order displayed by God in nature. And this too is
the reason why there is a want of greenness and
outward beauty in their writings, because they
must be comparatively sandy and barren until, in all
ways, they can come out into ultimate power and
works, which cannot take place until nature in her
lowest sphere (i.e. in the sphere of mechanics) is
seen to be a correspondence of the Lord and the
Spiritual World.

" Now I have proceeded historically as regards
my own mind, to show you just what I have gone
through, and, if there is anything set down egotisti-
cally, pray lay it to the account of the method thus
chosen, and not altogether to conceit.

" The sum of my belief respecting our friend,
Mr Tulk's doctrines, is this : 1. that his view re-
specting the Lord is Socinianism, so far as this,
that it teaches an unrevealed and necessarily un-
revealable God, unhinging the worship of Jesus

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 195

Christ, by making Him a mere image projected
through finite minds. 2. That his sole (intellectual)
attachment to Swedenborg is by means of the
doctrine of correspondence ; which, however, he
manages to hold in a fanciful way, unwarranted by
his Author, in order to suit his first and last doctrines,
viz. Socinianism and Berkeleyism. 3. That his Ber-
keleyism, a doctrine of nature, instead of being a
foundation to his scheme, is but a light outer dross,
whereby the natural world is made to smile a little
upon the fantasies which his Socinianism produces ;
and yet that he has no other foundation, no scientific
pillars deep sunken in the nature of mundane things,
and hence is in perpetual insecurity, and can never
hope to have half a dozen followers at once. . . .

" On re-reading this, I find I have omitted one
subject, which is that, to my apprehension, the
Doctrines of the New Church shine with tenfold
lustre, and their rationality is tenfold more con-
spicuous to me since I got rid of the Tulkian method
of interpreting them. Only take them as a Revela-
tion, and proceed by a large Induction from the whole
to read them aright, rather than by logical processes
to insinuate your own old ideas into them, and you
will see that they are a Kving fountain of beauty
and reason."

Whatever may be thought of the mental process
by which Wilkinson rid himself of Berkeleyism and
its dependent Tulkism, this letter has importance

196 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

as a fragmentary spiritual autobiography ; and it
illustrates once more, if further illustration were
necessary, how, for him at least, Swedenborg's
writings were upon all questions the ultimate court
of appeal, the ne plus ultra of arbitration.

We have seen, in the Biographical chapter, that
party spirit ran high in the Swedenborgian bodies.
Though based actually in profound differences of
opinion, it sometimes found occasion for its exhibi-
tion in matters of minor importance. Such occasions
were, in the bachelors' days when they lived together
at Store Street, not unwelcome to Garth Wilkinson
and his brother.

There was, however, at least one controversy
which cannot be ranked as of minor importance, the
editing of Swedenborg's "Diarium" by the Sweden-
borg Society. It has been alluded to above (page
169) in Wilkinson's letter to Dr Tafel concerning
the publication of " The Dreams." Wilkinson gave
an account of his first introduction to the MS. in
a letter to his fiancee.

" Yesterday x evening Mr El well came to see me,
as did also Mr A. Wornum. We all three went
together in the evening to Mr Sibly's to see the
original manuscript of Swedenborg's Diary. It is
literally immense : so closely written, and withal
so illegible from abbreviations that it will be a work
of great labour to edit it. At the same time the

1 July 24, 1839.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 197

contents are highly curious, and I am quite anxious
to see it printed. The whole will fill 8 or 9 octavo
volumes. There are particulars about numbers of the
persons of antiquity, and also about many illustrious
moderns. Altogether it is a most wonderful book."

More than a half century later, when few of those
who had discussed an almost forgotten matter can
have been living, he wrote to a friend :

" 1 1 cannot separate between Swedenborg's
* Diarium ' and his published writings, or think that
the jottings of the former are any more mere dreams
or visions than his memorable Relations in his
published Works. . . . But for my persistent and
insistent action, the ' Diarium ' would never have
been published by the Swedenborg Society when it
was. It was a dead letter in MS. in the hands of
the Rev. Mansah Sibley, who resisted its then
publication. I think that the Rev. M. Sibley died
in the nick of time, and so the Swedenborgian Society
got hold of the MS. It belonged really to the Royal
Academy of Sciences of Stockholm, having been
borrowed from it, and not returned. Through
Baron Berzelius, I got leave from the Academy for
its publication, and personally sent the MS. off to
Professor Immanuel Tafel at Tubingen. At that
time it was said by a New Church Minister that if
the c Diarium ' was published it would ' disband the
Church.' I persevered, notwithstanding."

1 Letter to Mr J. Thomson, October 7, 1894.

198 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

Wilkinson was strong enough to carry his point
and to crush opposition in this matter ; but the
feeling of opposition remained and showed itself
in disapproval and resentment.

But the continuous and heavy tasks of transla-
tion in which he soon engaged himself deprived the
elder brother alike of time and inclination for un-
necessary controversy. The strength of his opinions
tended rather to isolation than to debate ; and he
did not without need appear in public Sweden-
borgian matters. Indeed, even before his practice
absorbed him for a long series of years, he relied
almost entirely upon the written, as distinguished
from the spoken, word for the promulgation of what
he believed and thought.

In 1847 and 1849 Wilkinson delivered lectures
before the Swedenborg Association. The extract
which follows is an answer to criticism upon the
latter. 1

" Your onslaught number two is more serious.
You cite from me that * there is less of the Divine
seed in the world than there was in Swedenborg's
mind a hundred years ago, and, if we go on at this
rate, there will soon be none left.' Now read the
context and remember the occasion. Remember
that I was speaking to nobody but the Swedenborg
Association, which professes to carry out Sweden-
borg's doctrines through all things. The passage

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, June 28, 1845).

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 199

never was meant to convey anything but a rebuke
to that audience for having done nothing, for having
possessed themselves of Swedenborg and never
sown, reaped, or resown him. It was perfectly true
of them. They have so put themselves under Sweden-
borg, that if they don't follow him out, they do
nothing. Had I not been (very unwillingly) address-
ing that body, I should never have mentioned
Swedenborg's name, should hardly have thought
of him. Of the very people there present, I believe
every one to live in an atmosphere and stratum of
truths deeper and wider than Swedenborg ever
dreamt of : only not consciously, because they see
only Swedenborgically. I believe that our modern
plane of existence is human and social in quite a new
sense, and that good Swedenborg knew not of it.
He was not aware of the existence of the Social
World, save as an atmosphere : he saw clean through
it, and consequently saw nothing in it."

People do not like to be scolded, however faithful
and well-intentioned the scolder; and these people
revenged themselves upon the scolder by doubting
the orthodoxy of his view Concerning Swedenborg.
The attitude of suspicion taken up by the sectarian
class of Swedenborgians was long maintained, and
it betrayed itself in a half-hearted support of their
champion, in failure to welcome and use his work.

Such an attitude was by no means universal
among the Swedenborgians : Wilkinson had always

200 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

his enthusiastic followers who saw the man and his
work as faithful and as of vital importance to their
cause. But the doubt and suspicion were evident
enough to the subject of them. 1

" No news has come from Mr Clapp yet, and I am
therefore uncertain whether my second batch of
proofs has arrived, and whether my Life of Sweden-
borg is published (in America) or not. Newberry
tells me that the New Church people are very decided
in their vituperation of the Book, and that they
patronize it not at all. He has not sold 200 copies,
and will be sadly out of pocket, poor man. However,
it is eagerly read by many of those persons whose
ear I have desired, and specially by the most in-
telligent among the Unitarians. I am somewhat
curious to know what its fate may be on your side
of the water."

The Swedenborgians may have held aloof from the
book for a time ; but they ultimately discovered
that its aim was good and that it fulfilled its aim.
It ran out of print, and a call for a second edition
was met in 1888. It remains the classical work
upon the subject, alike for the Swedenborgian and
the general reader.

Good work is seldom done without opposition
and misunderstanding, and there is no need to enter
at greater length into old differences of opinion
and action than is necessary to show that in his

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, January 25, 1850.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 201

following of Swedenborg, as in every cause which
he espoused, Wilkinson was prepared to stand, and
did stand, alone. This was often disheartening.
But he had the satisfaction of knowing that opinion
came round to his side. Many years before he ended
together his writing and his life, he was generally
recognized as the most learned, industrious, and
outspoken of all who " read the Writings."

Among the various definitions of genius which
have been offered, the best known and almost the
worst in quality is that which calls it " the trans-
cendent capacity for taking pains." Upon such a
definition, and upon much better grounds, Wilkin-
son's claim to genius as a translator would be
unimpeachable. 1

" ' The Economy of the Animal Kingdom ' is pro-
ceeding apace through the press, 208 pages being
now printed. This Work does not diminish my
interest in the natural philosophy promulgated by
Swedenborg. It is, however, a very difficult Treatise
to follow ; and, when I tell you that, after reading
every proof four times, I still find that I have not
half exhausted the meaning, and in many cases
have not perceived the ratio of the general order
at all, you will, I think, consider that the work is
not calculated at first hand for the popular amuse-
ment. Deeply interesting as the matter, for the
most part, is, the method is perhaps to the full as

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, February 1844.

JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

instructive to the mind as the matter. There is,
every now and then, such a masterly flinging on
one side of the obtrusive yet non-essential parts of
a subject, and such a long discernment of the quiet,
retiring centres and pivots of things. We see a
mind for which the still small voices of creation are
excellent music, a mind whose stillness is itself so
profound that the mixed harmonies are its veriest
language. This must incite us all to cultivate a
finer sense, and to receive it as a settled truth that
there is ever something more in nature than the order
first presented to the senses ; that this order is the
lowest, a chaos (as it were) of essentials and non-
essentials ; and that the latter must be rejected
to the sides of the circumference, to give breadth
to the series, while the former must be placed in
the direct line of descent, and then contemplated as
the main progressions of Creative Wisdom. But I
must stow this, for I am getting into a Treatise."
More than two years later he is able to write : 1
" My labours on the ' Economy ' are, I may say, done.
The last sheet of my Preface (it makes more than
five sheets) is printed ; and, by the next boat, I
intend to send you three or four copies of it. I am
sure that it is not in your way, being altogether
critical, literary, biographical, controversial, British-
Museum-ish ; and not universal, spiritual, or organic.
For I know my own powers, and that they limit me

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, April 18, 1846.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 203

absolutely to the former walk, and therefore I go
in it cheerfully, hoping that it may be of use for
better things. To me, everything which dissipates
any bit of misconception or nonsense about Sweden-
borg, or which gives a new correct notion, is of
importance ; and my labours are a jotting down
of some such things as these. Bibliography, in an
extended sense, is the whole idea of them. If they
fail of this, they are good for nothing ; in so far as
they succeed in this, my end is realized in them."

The piece of work thus estimated by its author is
one of those concerning which Mr Emerson wrote :

" The admirable preliminary discourses with which
Mr Wilkinson has enriched these volume., throw
all the contemporary philosophy of England into
shade." But it is good to be humble. The spade-
work and drudgery which produced these translations
and introductions built the foundations of that
deep knowledge of Swedenborg's Works which
were to bear superstructures valuable to all time
to the New Church.

Concerning his translation of Swedenborg's work,

' The Generative Organs considered anatomically,

physically, and philosophically," Wilkinson wrote : l

4i I am bringing out, parallel with my work on
the Body, a Translation of Swedenborg's work
on the Generative organs of both sexes : a book
of singular suggestiveness, though not very com-

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, August 2, 1850.

204 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

patible with the smugness and straightlacedness of
many of the followers of Swedenborg. However,
the Swedenborg Association has had the boldness
to commission me to execute a version. I cannot
help regarding it as one small help on the way to a
greater liberty of thought and knowledge on sexual
subjects. It will at all events make them matters
of contemplation, and begin, therefore, to rescue
them from that heavily covered animality and
hypocrisy which at present lies in them. Our
existing education on this head can only be char-
acterized as unconsciously piggish ! But when the
wings of Science and Spirit come and annex them-
selves, the gross parts will be raised into the air,
and things before invisible and unutterable will be
seen to be as clean as the flowers of the field or as the
pleasant butterflies, which are the flowers of flowers.
But, doubtless, even these must be fenced round,
lest the pigs should run grunting to eat them."

This view, that daylight and fresh air will purge
the uncleanness which has attached itself to Nature,
was quite characteristic of the man. Here, as on
the question of publishing Swedenborg's "Diary,"
he was all in favour of outspeaking.

Wilkinson frequently brought Swedenborg and
his message before those in whom he hoped that
acquaintance would fructify into service : among such
were Thomas Carlyle and Miss Harriet Martineau. 1

1 Letter to Miss Marsh, October 22, 1839.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 205

" On Saturday I wrote Mr Carlyle a reply to his
kind letter, sending him, on loan, what biographical
notices of Swedenborg I could procure. I also gave
him a few particulars about the Philosophical Works
and the ' Diary of Memorabilia,' which is in manu-
script, and I told him my motives for having troubled
him so much with the Books, namely, that I wished
him to have before him materials for forming and
expressing to the world an opinion on the subject.
Whether this may produce anything further I
know not, and, indeed, having now done my part,
I must leave him to himeslf."

Miss Martineau acknowledged his present very
sympathetically (October 22, 1838) :-

"It is my intention to read with seriousness and
diligence the book you have sent me : and I believe
I shall sit down to the work under somewhat less
than the ordinary degree of prejudice on the subject.
I agree largely in some of the practical parts of the
faith of your Church, and thence have a respect by
anticipation for the speculative portions which I
do not yet understand or agree with. Mr Sampson
Reed has been kind enough to furnish me with much
material for inight into the belief and practice of
your Church, and the more I learn the more desirous
I am that both should be better understood than
they are."

Of much later date, though brought about by
similar propagandist work on Wilkinson's part, are

206 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

the letters from Robert Browning and Coventry
Patmore, both of whom were his old friends. 1

" MY DEAR DR WILKINSON, Your kind note
did indeed render active rather than waken
many memories, pleasant and painful together, as
must happen in such a case : you, however, stay
associated with nothing that is other than pleasurable.
Thank you very much for the book I shall read with
great interest. I well remember the letter in which
you recommended me to study Swedenborg. I
believe that you and I have always been in accordance
as to aspiration and sympathy, though we may
differ in our appreciation of the relative importance
of facts connected with them.

" I am glad to suppose, both from what you tell
me and what you are silent about, that on the whole
things go well with you. So may they continue !
I too have an elderly child a son, and I live with
my sister, whom you must have seen in old days
when poor Dow was young.

" Believe me, with reiterated thanks for your
gift and kind words, Yours very cordially,

"ROBERT BROWNING."

Mr Coventry Patmore was inclined to regard
Swedenborg in the rather odd aspect of a Papist
manque. Writing in 1891, he says :

1 Letter from Mr Browning 1 , May 17, 1887.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 207

" I am very glad to see your handwriting again,
after so many years. Your 4 cloth differs ' less than
you suppose from mine. I claim Swedenborg as
the greatest of Roman Catholic prophets, since St
Augustine at least. Swedenborg's great inspiration,
like that of all the Prophets and Apostles, was
purely ethical and psychological, and did not prevent
him making mistakes about other things, any more
than the inspirations of the Evangelists prevented
them from giving four different versions of the
inscription on the Cross. All the time that S. was
abusing the Catholics for holding false doctrine, he
was mainly teaching pure Catholic doctrine, as it is
and always has been held by the Saints, though the
Parish Priest, partly from his own usual ignorance
and partly from the brutish condition of his con-
gregation, is compelled to

( Make Truth look as near a lie
As can comport with her divinity.'

Your own people, you know, are just as stupid, and
know no more of what Swedenborg meant than ours
do of the meaning of the Breviary. It was Sweden-
borg mainly that brought me into the Catholic
Church."

A year later, Mr Patmore wrote to the same
purpose :

" I am reading your new book with the greatest
pleasure and profit, as, indeed, I read all your books.

208 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

The ' Summa ' of St Thomas Aquinas and your
volume of selections from Swedenborg have, for
many years, formed the groundwork of all my
reading : and, you will perhaps be surprised to hear
that they seem to me to be but two aspects of one
and the same Catholic truth, St Thomas appealing
mainly to the ear of rational faith, Swedenborg
to the perceptive faculty."

Swedenborg's writings have been indicted as
teaching an intellectual, rather than a spiritual,
religion a religion more of the head than of the
heart ; and the indictment is supported by the
inscription which he saw, in one of his visions, upon
a Temple in Heaven, Nunc licet intrare intellect-
ualiter in mysterid fidei. Wilkinson's work, con-
cerned largely with the intellectual apprehension of
matters spiritual, might seem open to a similar
charge : but, in fact, he would have none of a
religion which, while it flattered the mind, left the
conduct untouched. 1

" Really and truly, the worshipping of this idol
intelligence is the greatest absurdity that can be,
as it is the prevailing one of the present day. It is
but a shade higher than Mammon- worship. For,
only think what intelligence is 9 apart from use.
What does it do ? What monuments does it leave ?
What men does it lead to Heaven ? " He goes on
to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom,

1 Letter to Miss Marsh, December 3, 1839.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 209

and to extol a religion which seeks the latter.
In another letter of the same year, he returns
to the subject from a slightly different point of
view.

" I am very much pleased with the mention you
make of Sampson Reed's book. I was confident
you would like it, and I am quite of your opinion
regarding the bearing of the sentence you quote
from Carlyle. After all, it seems to me to come to
this, that man sees not only with his eye, but with
himself, and consequently his vision is such as his
interior being is. This is clearly implied in the
commonest way of stating it, when we say, ' He
sees,' for, to see well not only implies a clear cornea
but a fit ground of vision. It is not the mere trans-
parency of the intellect which makes the mind's
sight acute and perfect, but the will also must have
a predisposition to be affected with the things which
the intellect perceives. All (of) which our friend
Sampson has stated far better than I can do, yet
still it sometimes makes an impression and even
sets the thing in a better light when those we love
talk it over in their own familiar way, and that for
the very reason just given ; that then the will is
sure to be somewhat fixed upon the same point as
the intellect."

And, in fact as well as in theory, Wilkinson kept
a just distance between faith and knowledge, holding,
with Bishop Pearson, that " those things which

210 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

are apparent are not said properly to be believed
but to be known." 1

" I have read your strictures on Mr Tennant
(See page 74) with interest. First, the facts are
important, and I do believe them to be facts.
As to the theory of God's intervention, let us
hold it very gently. However, that God does
intervene in the most partial as well as in the most
universal ways who can doubt ? Furthermore, that
there are certain hieroglyphical or correspondential
powers given to certain actions that gesture and
attitude bring spirit with them I hold to be in-
disputable. If we could work the Science of corre-
spondences, we should be enabled to perform many
wonders, without any new substances being called
into play. In Mesmerism, if we knew what wrinkle
of face and what play of fingers gave the shape
correspondent to any drug, we might produce its
effects upon a susceptible patient by one look
or one pointing or one beckon. This is a deep
part of the universal laws of nature. The Name
of God has also, I doubt not, its own natural
powers."

As his writings gained acceptance and as he
became himself acknowledged as the most extensive
existing repository of Swedenborgian lore, Wilkinson's
correspondence became enormous, it must have
constituted a severe tax upon his leisure; but he

1 Letter to Mr Henry .lames, June 1, 1849.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN

never complained, and it may be doubted whether
any inquirer failed to receive an answer. Many
such correspondents wrote from America. One
inquires about Jasper Svedborg, the father of
Emanuel Swedenborg, another writes to suggest that
a new edition of ( ' The Human Body " should be
prepared, with anatomical plates for the benefit
of lay students ; there are inquirers concerning
the correspondential bearings of commerce, the
early African nations and upon a host of other like
matters.

From answers to such correspondents and also
from obiter dicta on Swedenborgian subjects, I
propose to give extracts, allowing them to stand
disjointed, as they came day by day from his pen.
They will be found loosely grouped together accord-
ing to their subject matter.

1 " ' Fairbrass ' 2 is not indeed, as you well remark,
devoted to ' the light and pretty ' and new ideas
and connexions of the narrative with the birds and
flowers. All nature is always conversing about
good and evil, and nothing of her inner voices,
irrespective of these grand and terrible Rulers, is
light or pretty in her. The Science of Correspond-
ence talks : ' Day unto day uttereth speech, and
night into night showeth knowledge.' There is no
speech or language when their voice is not heard.

1 Letter to Mr John Martin, October I, 1894.

2 A character in " A Child's Story/' by E. Pemberton.

JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

Their line (?) is gone out into all the earth, and their
words unto the end of the world. In them hath
He set a Tabernacle for the Sun."

" Since, without these spiritual factors, there
is no truth in talking walking-sticks or kneeling
knights, inventions about them otherwise inspired
are frivolous, and do not touch anything of the heart,
even in children. It is the shining down from an
internal light upon a dark world that gives zest to
all myth and fairyland."

1 " I shall most likely stroll down about 2, when
the Procession leaves the Palace, and though myriads
of common human beings, uncrowned, will most
likely be all I shall see, I shall have feelings which
are recompense for the sight of Royalty I shall
scarcely get. We before talked of our common
awe in witnessing the majesty of human masses.
I always now think doctrinally of such things
as even these. I cannot help looking toward the
Being in whom all these particles of Man are in
union or oneness, that Divine and unbounded
Man of whom all men in all times and countries
and planets are but the diverse images and forms ;
whilst he is their unchanging and Substantial
Humanity.

2 " I should have liked to be one of your party

1 Letter to Miss Marsh, November 8, 1837. This refers to
Queen Victoria's visit to the City on the following day, Lord
Mayor's Day.

2 "Letter to Miss Marsh, September 11, 1838.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 213

when you visited the Great Western Steamer. I
do take such a deep interest in all these new births
of this Time, for they seem to me signs of still greater
changes which are passing over the souls of men,
from which they come forth to tell tales to those
who like to listen, of what is going on in the invisible
Kingdom, where they originate."

SPIRITUAL AND NATURAL NOURISHMENT

1 " Reading ' The Arcana ' yesterday, I came on a
passage Gil Spiritual and Natural nourishment, and
the correspondence between them, and how they
help each other !

6 That Scientifics and truths sustain men's souls
is manifest from the desires of knowing instinct
in all men, and likewise from the correspondence
of food with scientifics : which correspondence also
manifests itself during the taking of food, for, if
this be done whilst one is discoursing and listening
to discourse, the vessels which receive the chyle are
opened, and the man is more fully nourished than
if he (or she) eats alone. Spiritual truths and the
instruction in them would have such an effect with
men if they were in the love of good' ('Arcana,'
n. 6078).

" How important therefore it is not to confirm

1 Letter to Miss E. L. Pertz, October 29, 1883.

14 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

the habit of isolation at what might be sacrament-
times, will come home to you."

SIGNIFICANCE OF EARTHQUAKES 1

6 You ask me about Earthquakes, what they
proceed from ? Do you mean naturally or spiritu-
ally ? Spiritually, Swedenborg tells us, they re-
present and proceed from ' changes of the state of
the church ' ; and I should think, from changes
of the grander kind. The Earth represents the
natural man ; the Earth's surface, the natural man
exteriorly illuminated by the heat and light of the
Spiritual Sun ; that is by love and faith ; but if
only exteriorly, and not interiorly, his Earth's green
and illumined surface consists of the hypocritical
pretences of love, and the mere knowledges of faith.
The depths of the Earth, from which the Earth-
quakes begin, represent the interiors of the natural
man at variance with the exteriors ; and conse-
quently Earthquakes represent the state when the
interiors are about, by mighty commotions, to
destroy the fair surface of the exteriors ; or when
inward lusts of evil are about to overwhelm every-
thing of spiritual knowledge and even of seeming
love, in the superficial aspect of the man ; and to
reduce the whole man into a final or homogeneous
state of barren, stony desolation."

1 Letter to Miss Marsh, September 10, 1839.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 215

THE CLOTHING OF ADAM AND EVE l

'' Tell that I think there must be survivals

of correspondences among savage tribes. The fig-
leaves came as a deep perception to the inspired
writer of the Word in Genesis. They signify the
lapse out of celestial into natural good remaining,
into its lower mind, now covering the deeper lost
innocence. Adam and Eve made these for them-
selves (verse 7). But (verse 21) The Lord made
them skins ; signifying a deeper lapse, and a greater
covering. It is all written in 6 Arcana,' vol. i."

MENTAL DEPRESSION, CONSCIOUS SEPARATION FROM

GOD 2

" You mistake greatly, if you think that I have
a greater insight in times of trouble, into the uses
and ends of temptation, than other people, or than
you. Trouble involves the want of this percep-
tion, and hence the confused state of mind which
all wretchedness causes. All wretchedness consists
in the feeling that we are living for no end ; and
really, that we are thus living unconnected from the
Supreme End, or the Lord. If you take any case
of unhappiness whatever, you will find that this
is the case ; they all involve the doubt in the man's
mind, of ' what good is my life to me ? ' In other

1 Letter to Miss E. L. Pertz, August 23, 1888.

2 Letter to Miss Marsh, September 10, 1839.

216 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

words, ' what am I living for ? ' And thus they
all consist in a felt separation, greater or lesser,
higher or lower, from the End of Ends. Thus you
perceive, that in times of trouble, every man alike
must feel a want of perception of the use of the
things which come over him. Yet still there are
differences in men on this matter. In some the
whole thing appears perfectly hopeless, for they
have no faith in happiness at all, or in other words,
there is no affirmation of any end in any part or
^acuity of their mind or being. These are they who
delight in being miserable, and are the most selfish
of men, and in almost total separation from the
Supreme Goodness and Love. They are misan-
thropists, and only admit the existence of God, that
they must have the power of charging Him with
their miseries. Their miseries are not temptations,
but are the results of the loss of worldly things,
such as power, money or fame. But there is quite
another class of sufferers, (are we not all sufferers
in one class or the other, or a class intermediate
between the two ?) whose griefs are the results of
the perception of evil in themselves, and whose
trials are all purifying temptations. They constantly
feel, more and more deeply, that they are not good,
and that thus they are not connected as they should
be with the one great end of Being. Yet still in
all their gloom they see just enough of star and
moonlight overhead, to show them that there is a

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 217

plan of journey, and a series of definite objects to
be passed, and a number of ends to be attained ;
though the light does not suffice them, perhaps, to
distinguish definitely a single thing : still less are
they cheered by a single warming ray. They only
have a cold knowledge of the general fact, without
any particulars to illustrate it, and without any
comfort in knowing it. But they persevere, for
God is with them, turning their darkness into light,
and their moon into a sun. They are big with the
coming day, and are unceasingly advancing towards
it ; and every moment of gloom is the necessary
way to it, for there is a Divine Force, which is driv-
ing itself on through them, and the darkness, and
kindling day in the midst of both.

" What can it be, but God, which thus makes us
persevere in our way, when we have no pleasure in
persevering ? which gives us a faith in the final
good of our being, when we have no view of any
good at all ? The battle and the victory of tempta-
tion, when a man fights against himself, and against
his likings is indeed a mystery, which requires us to
admit something more than self as the agent of the
wondrous conflict. I often feel, that for a man to
go forth in helm and plume, and fight against his
fellows, is natural and easy enough, for all the
motives of himself drive him to do so ; but that for
a man to fight against his pleasures, inclinations,
natural propensities, and early acquired habitudes,

218 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

is no such easy thing to conceive ; and indeed it
could not be conceived, if it were not felt, more
or less in all temptation. ' A man's enemies are
those of his own household.' "

MANY INHABITED WORLD s 1

" I welcome the moral of your muse. Some good
flowing in and flowing out is indispensable, to give
real worth to song. There must be psalm, whether
plain or veiled at the centre, and your dream comes
to you from good stars, teaching you that temptation
undergone and vanquished, and the cheer that
comes after are the Way, the Truth and the Life
of whatever is finally lovely.

" You deal accurately with the astronomic con-
ception of the dead moon and the blasted volcanic
coffin of it. Can fire have existed there if there
were no atmosphere ? My belief is that there is
no planet or sufficient satellite but has human beings
upon it. Looking from the faith that the creative
Love and Wisdom of the Almighty myriads of solar
systems cannot satisfy the Infinite Man and Saviour,
the revealed thought is welcome, that an unmeasur-
able variety of Man is demanded to fill the nursery
planets of the firmament. Also there is, as in
Geology, a perfect order in this immensity. You
want flesh and bone of every kind, from the summit

1 Letter to Miss Alice Head, December 24, 1898.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 219

to the base of the universal Man here discerned.
Therefore we have not brains enough or imagina-
tions enough to limit the breath, and consequently
spiritual capacity, of the Lunar people. The longer
we live, if we are advancing in true light, the more
we shall find that truth eclipses fiction, that godly
science, in its activity and rejection of materialism
and sensualism, and in its capacity for learning
and distinction, uses imagination as a torch wherever
it is useful, but never disparages the Inner Sun from
which all light and heat proceed originally."

1 " Of course the loss of those nearest and dearest
to us has a Providential Use for us, if we are living
in the Way, the Truth and the Life. It is fearfully
and wonderfully elevating to all who take it aright ;
like the first experiences of flight to a young bird,
when the Mother commands it to have faith in Wing
and Air. Great things follow from the human
faith ; among the rest, wings for the mind to explore
the Spiritual World to which the beloved have been
taken."

2 " Our loving sympathy is with you in your great
sorrow. No consolation can make it other than a
crown of sorrows. Such a husband taken from you
in the height of his years and powers, and such a
life to be filled on your lonely way !

1 Letter to Mr Tafel on the death of his daughter, Mrs Pertz,
September 15, 1893.

2 Letter to Mrs Tafel on the death of her husband, January 11,
1893.

220 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

4 With the Lord's help alone you will be equal
to it ; and in fulfilling your years you will find the
only consolation, until your hour of Victory also
comes, and the heavenly marriage is reached.

" His work to our eyes looks broken off, but to
Providence this cannot be. He did what he could
do, and no other man in the world was equal to the
quantity and quality of his achievements for the
New Church. In that case he has virtually left
nothing undone, and in his own line nothing that
wants doing. Others will be raised up to continue
on the plains where he left off upon the mountains.
And then he is at work above by influx, and will
guide the choice of those who will be his successors.
Let us feel sure that the Lord's Church will not
suffer because one potent spirit more is transferred
to the heavenly side of her Armies."

COMMERCE

1 " Your Mama tells me that finds support

in Swedenborg for her view that each country
should shut out the fruits and produce of all other
lands. Almost anything can be confirmed out of a
voluminous writer by taking parts and isolating
them from the general meaning. Humanity also
is a whole, consisting of different and distinct parts
or organs. Some of it is family-humanity, some is

1 Letters to Miss E. L. Pertz, May 30 and June, 1889.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 821

clannish, some in larger governmental blocks, some
in great empires, some almost in world-empires.
The latter is the case especially with Oceanic England.
According to these diversities, communications exist
and are limited and extended. In the family scale,
at the bottom of ' civilization,' people kill their
own sheep, if they have any, and make their own
candles, in that case, etc., etc., etc. All these
things are profoundly traditional. But none of
this is a rule for any other organic Society. The
people of the heart, which lives in the widest circula-
tion of goods, are not to be measured by the people
of the bones, which want to be still. The people
of the brains, which live in thought and will, are not
to be measured by the limbs, which exist to be
governed.

" But enough of this. Swedenborg's doctrine
here is that the people of this earth are fundamentally
commercial, or existing and flourishing in the inter-
change of commodities between all countries ; so
that each may have what all has. The Reason is,
that this Earth belongs to the general skin in the
Grand Man ; which skin is the universal covering,
everywhere communicating with itself. And on
this function depends the production of the external
Word, and the Incarnation itself. The externality
of the mind of this earth made it possible that the
Word could be written here in this end and terminus
of creation ; and that the Lord might be then

JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

communicated in the Spiritual World to the entire
universe. I send you the Book in which you will
find this. . . .

" As to commerce, I should like to see any of
Mr Mill's papers on his view of the subject. Com-
merce is as irremovable as human Society on this
earth is. So there is no call to defend it. The pillars
of our mankind rest upon it. But, for the sake of
dear individual minds, it is important not to accept
fallacies, or to confirm them into falsities, for fallacies
dwarf the mind, and falsities pervert it.

" No view against Commerce itself can be re-
conciled with Christianity. The perversions of it
require the acknowledgment of the good of it, and
they are to be dominated by the new conscience,
and commerce is to be thus regenerated. But, for
the rest, it is no worse than the Church and State,
Medicine, Law, Trade, Artizanship, and every other
department of Life. The whole head is sick, and
the whole heart faint, not commerce alone. All
demand the new daily Duty-doing.

" If all the dates in Biskra could be the unquestioned
property of the poor Arabs and Negroes, the result
would be that they would sink under the glut and
gluttony of the goods, and next year there would be
no Date-palms left. So of every other place and
property where non-proprietors came into possession
of what is not their own. The thing itself, the
property, would cease. The world requires Self-

THE SWEDENBORGIAN

interest to carry it on, until human-love-interest
comes. And self-interest, with its fore-sights, does
not exist in the lowest classes anywhere. As
commerce is a divinely permitted necessity for this
earth, so no final race here can have its perfect
bodily development without a table temperately
set out with the fruits and meats of all the climates
from the pole to the pole.

" My hand is shaky in my 78th year, but I want
to say the truth, that truth may come and be done.

" Finally, I hope you will daily enjoy all the
fruits you can, and some of the wines."

DOCTRINE OF SUCCESSIVE REVELATIONS l

" I miss writing to you, though, owing now to
feeble health, I am deficient in energy, though warm
in will. But Christmas reinforces love with an
external command. . . .

" There is little for me to record. I am still
trying a little work in writing, 2 now an Egyptian
theme, perhaps nameable as Egypt Scriptural and
Egypt Monumental. As I emerge from my weak-
ness, I look forward to continuing this attempt to
introduce a Spirit from the Word into the dead body
of Egyptology. The subject may open into interest :
for the students of the hieroglyphics and the tombs
and temples never think that there is any connexion

1 Letter to Mr John Thomson, December 22, 1898.

2 Isis and Osiris, etc.

JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

but a fabulous one between the detailed Biblical
Revelation and the so-called history of the Pharaohs.
I know you like to hear of my small ventures.

'' The demolition of the Dervishes is agreeable to
my apprehension. The worst of them have been
received into the Spiritual world where there is
skill to treat them. The rest will make excellent
soldiers and men of duty for the British and Irish
Chain, one Day to become golden and impearled
round the neck of Africa."

THE DOCTRINE OF SUCCESSIVE REVELATIONS 1

" You told me on Thursday that it was believed
among your countrymen in Vej that the gift of
singing among them was suggested and imitated
from the songs and notes of birds.

" It may interest you to read the following rough
translation from the poem ' De Rerum Natura ' of
Lucretius. ' Imitating the liquid notes of birds by
the mouth came long before the time when men
were able to chant their slender ditties as songs,
and to please the ears. Moreover the sighs of the
West Wind, Zephyrus, through the hollows of reeds,
first taught these countrymen to blow their hemlock
flutes. Then, little by little, they learnt the dulcet
means which the pipe pours forth to the play of the
fingers of the singer ; the pipe, abundant through-
out the pathless groves, and woods and forest slopes,

1 Letter to Prince Momolu Massaquoi, September 15, 1894.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 225

the solitary places and divine houses of the shep-
herds " (Book v. 1379-1387).

" The earliest age, the pre- Adamite, was not savage,
but in " the innocence of ignorance." It had no
bad inheritance in it to lame its nature. The men
and women had Freewill, and, though designed for
elevation to the celestial state called Adam, they
could stop if they chose at any earlier state. Some
did so stop ; and are now probably the Cave-men ;
so called Aborigines, but of many kinds. However,
all were then gifted of human faculties, and at first
learnt nothing from birds and from Zephyr.

" In later stages, indeed, man, a different creature,
has learnt from outward nature, in fact, learns every-
thing from without. But, in the beginning nature
was a correspondential image and shadow of him and
from his summit he saw through its veil, and gave
their acceptable symbolic names to all living things.

" Lucretius represents the Savage Man, and mistakes
him for the primeval man. The best of your race,
the African, represent the Remains of the Adamic
Race, but not of the Adamic Church, which perished.

" The doctrine of successive Churches or Revela-
tions is thus all-important to the understanding of
Swedenborg. These Churches are in a series, one
after another, and are " the ways of God to Man."
They are what the Greek Testament calls JSons.
When they are comprehended in their order, Revela-
tion can become Theology."

226 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

PANTHEISM

1 " Are you Channing's critic in the ' Spirit of the
Age ? ' Right or wrong, Channing seems to have
vibrated back pretty entirely into a respectable
Anglo-Saxon Arianism, purged of the very essence
of the French socialist. I am not prepared to
offer any verdict, except on one point : I must say
on that, that it appeals to me that Fourier least of
all men deserves the title of a Pantheist. There are
no religious doctrines to be found in him worth
notice, and what little he has said theologically I
could have wished he had let alone. But then
observe the hypothesis upon which he has worked
the problems of existence. It is a distinctly Anthro-
pomorphic Hypothesis : a position that God's works
can be interpreted by man, because they are like
man's works, and interpreted by man's mind because
it is like God's mind. All that immensely reaching
genius to which the universe lies so coloured and so
subject consists in his implicit belief in some axiom
of the Manhood of God. It is this which makes him
give feeling and quasi-feeling to planets, suns,
vegetables and minerals. It is this which causes
him to treat the universe as a vast common-sense
house, full of utensils for human-like wants and
purposes. It is this which enables him, from a new
altitude of scornful benevolence, to call down

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, December 27j 1849.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN

thunders upon the impenetrability and impossibility
which the recent generations have been building
up everywhere. It is this which gives him hope,
faith, love and science. In short, if he has not
made use of a Personal God theologically, he has
at least never ceased to employ Him algebraically,
as the only cypher which can work the unknown
into the known and present us with the universe
as a patent quantity at last. Now, God cannot be
too present in all thought, and it is a peculiar glory
of Fourier that he has introduced Him personally as
the x of his vast mathematics : the x itself having
all the benefit of a cypher, at the same time that
it is itself, by illustration from the human mind,
the very plainest of substances. These thoughts
flitted through me when I read the well-ordered
dispute between Channing and his critic.

" On the other hand, I suspect that our Arians do
not themselves hold the Personality so strongly as
Fourier did, and that they separate it at a certain
altitude from the Humanity, when, it seems to me,
the Personality perishes."

HELL'S TORMENTS l

" I think there is an error in your last about the
signification of ' the worm that never dies.' You
seem to think that it signifies ' a troubled conscience '

1 Letter to Miss Marsh, November 13, 1838.

JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

and that the evil in a future life have this troubled
conscience. To me this would, I confess, be a very
unpleasant belief, because I see no reason why a
created being should be kept in a continual state of
self-reproach, without being able to practise self-
amendment. It rather seems to me that the exist-
ence of a troubled conscience shews a certain interior
love of the good and horror of the evil. But the
testimony of Swedenborg is quite conclusive on the
point. He asserts that the pains of conscience
form no part of the pains of Hell for, says he, in the
1st Vol. A. C. those who are there, ' have no con-
sciences.' They have in fact no repentance, no
remorse, no sorrow for sin of any kind whatever.
And the reason is plain, that in their final state
(which thus even to them is a rest\ the adventitious
goodness or truth, which dwelt in their outer mind
is quite removed and they are nothing but evil and
falsity nay, Swedenborg says they themselves ' are
evils and falsities.' Now the existence of conscience
of course depends upon the co-existence of two
contrary elements in the soul, but in the other state
the one element is taken away, and the other be-
comes all-ruling. Let it not however be therefore
supposed that the New Church doctrine diminishes
the terrors of Hell. The real question is, does it
make evil more or less terrible to you and to me
than it was before ; for evil and the false are the
only terribles of Hell. I believe it makes it in-

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 229

finitely more so. I should then say that the true
torment consists in the loves of evil themselves ;
for these loves being finite and most selfish burn
to be gratified by universal dominion, but being
checked and limited necessarily by each other what
a source of disappointed misery is here ! Self, in
its efforts to destroy other selfs, which efforts are
perpetually resisted, and tend therefore to narrow
and compress itself this self is the worm which
never dies. It might also be said that each of the
cupidities of the natural man is that worm ; in each
of them there is the desire of universal dominion,
and as this cannot be, each is, by its nature, weak
and miserable."

CONDITIONS FOR UNDERSTANDING SPIRITUAL
PROGRESS 1

" I think I do recollect once saying that to under-
stand the Arcana C. it was necessary we should
have gone through the states therein unfolded :
and I cannot help yet thinking it must be so. I
do not see how by this remark my Emmy or anyone
else is debarred from improvement : for is not our
Lord continually leading us through new states of
spiritual being, and do we not find ourselves then
conscious of truths which were before unknown,
which before could not be known ? for then we had

1 Letter to Miss Marsh, October 9, 1838.

230 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

not the faculties which discern them : I think it
manifest that if a thing has happened to ourselves
we can far better understand a description of it,
and this is even more applicable in spiritual things,
where each state is quite new, and perhaps quite
unlike all other states and so not to be comprehended
by them. In fact I might say that each state ta
be seen requires a separate eye or faculty of seeing.
And whenever a new state of our being is unfolded
there is more or less self-consciousness of it, which
is its eye, and in this self-consciousness, after all, is
contained all the knowledge we have of metaphysics
or philosophy as realities in ourselves. But it so
happens, that no man is conscious of all or even of
a very small part of what is transacted in his interior
man, though no doubt this consciousness will be
greatly increased, and in proportion as men become
more unselfish, they will become larger selves. Now,
the Arcana gives all that can be told in natural
language both of those changes of which we are,
and those of which we are not (but may one day) be
conscious, and therefore I think it is pretty clear
that our real knowledge of the internal things of
that book must be gradually produced by the gradual
development and self-consciousness of the internal
man. It will then be a description of what men are.
Then indeed things, which no patience of hammering
investigation could beat out, will be quite easily
seen and affirmed as true of ourselves as truths-

THE SWEDENBORGIAN Ml

In ourselves, which are substantial and self-evident
only. But, at present the Book describes of the
internal man much of which the interior of the men
of this dark age are not composed, so that they can
have no self-consciousness of it and their knowledge
must be nothing more than the knowledge of certain
sayings in a certain book ; of which it may be clearly
known what is said, but what it means in reference
to them, or in other words, what it is, must be quite
unknown."

THE SPIRITUAL IMPORTANCE OF HUMBLE DUTIES x

"Did you read through the first Vol. of the Arc.
Coel. ? I am truly glad that you feel such a deep
interest in the writings of Swedenborg, and I am
sure we shall always find them not only a solid
support in all the situations of grave and active life,
but also a delightful recreation of the mind and the
affections in converse on evenings when worldly
care is excluded, and when other religions are also
generally shut out, in order that they may not hurt
the cheerfulness of the occasion ; but it is a peculi-
arity of ours that it is our rule of conduct in the
world, our guide from the world to the regions of
abstract reason, and spiritual beauty, and even
the life and soul of liveliness with the lively, pro-
vided they be cheerful from a godly, and therefore

1 Letter to Miss Marsh, September 4, 1837.

232 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

truly human ground. May our Lord Jesus be with
us and in us and apply divine truths to the purifica-
tion and ordination of every act of our lives ! I
believe that there is no act, however degraded in its
outward form, which may not contain within it a
Spiritual beauty which is ineffable : because every
deed of man contains his will, and there may be
heavenly motives involved in doing the minutest
thing. Every act done because it is a duty to God
and His church to do it, is beautiful above language
and conception; and the real delight of it is that
stream of living waters in which the good live, when
the natural part of them is happily removed forever.
Now, pray, dear Girl, as no principle of philosophy is
worth a pin, which does not illustrate common or
real life in the world, look at the consequences of
this principle as applied to many vile and degraded
trades and callings. Recollect that nothing can be
done which may not be done from a heavenly motive.
Recollect that if a barber crops the hair in the best
manner because it is his duty ; because it is his
religion to do the least thing with all his will, such
man really does an act which contains within it
Love to God and love to his neighbour ; all the
6 Law and the Prophets ' are involved in every
such deed, and so it is shown that in this common
and disregarded employ there may be something
really Divine ! Tis true 'tis not felt as such by the
man then, but still whatever is contained in an act,

THE SWEDENBORGIAN

the Divine Goodness can evolve out of it, and there-
fore in the world of the Spirit, when the act has
long ceased, or rather where it never was, the Divinity
and true dignity of the motive, of the will, is all that
is felt and seen, and then the exaltation and enjoy-
ment are transcendent and ineffable."

SWEDENBORG'S WRITINGS 1

" On Saturday I dined with Mr Coxe, at his office
in the City, and saw there the manuscript of the
'Apocalypsis Explicata,' three quarto volumes in
the Author's own writing. You may guess how
small and compact the writing is by the fact that
his three volumes of manuscript print into four
volumes ! The writing is very beautiful and ex-
tremely legible. I took the trouble after dinner
to make a facsimile of a short paragraph with the
style and tracing paper, so that I have got it very
exact indeed."

2 " I am very glad you did not commence reading
the ' Apocalypse Revealed ' ; for, although it is
truly a wonderful book, I do feel that it is the most
severe and dry piece of reading I ever took up.
I have nearly finished the first volume, which I
consider conclusive of the fact that there is an
internal sense in the Scriptures of which the writer

1 Letter to Miss Marsh, August 27, 1839.

2 Letter to Miss Marsh, undated.

234 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

was cognizant, but still I only finish the book as a
question of evidence. ... I conceive that Sweden-
borg's book on ' The Last Judgment ' ought to be
read before it, in order to make people in some way
acquainted with the subject treated of. I should
tell you that I am reading it out of a musty old
translation printed in Manchester. The very sight
of the book is repulsive, so I approach it under all
sorts of disadvantages. I think that a new edition
on good paper would have much assisted me, and
ministered a delight to the senses, which is not to
be despised as an assistance to the soul."

SWEDENBORG AND MATRIMONY l

" On Sunday I dined at Mr Tulk's and spent a
very pleasant day. Mr Tulk read me a portion of
a work he is writing on the Lord's Prayer. He also
told me a very curious anecdote of Swedenborg.
On what authority it rests, I know not, but as it
was told me I tell it. Someone asked Swedenborg
why he had never married. He replied either ' that
he was married ' or that c he had seen his future
wife in the spiritual world.' He also named her and
said she was a Countess Gildenberg." 2

1 Letter to Miss Marsh, September 24, 1839.

2 Swedenborg's first love and its disappointment are related in
Wilkinson's " Emanuel Swedenborg" (pp. 14-15 and 250, 261)
te With regard to his first and only love, Emerentia Polhen, Sweden-
borg in his old age, as Tybeck relates, assured the daughters
and sons-in-law of the former object of his affection, as they visited

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 235

SWEDENBORG'S MANUSCRIPT l

" I am now writing an Introduction to the ' Hiero-
glyphic Key,' in which, in very brief, I shall attempt
to touch upon the Science of Correspondences in its
serial aspect : as a manifold, and not a simple or
(what is the same thing), an occult science. For a
manifold science involves the idea of love, reconcilia-
tion of parts, charity ; whereas a simplistic science
is haughty, high and reserved."

SWEDENBORG'S CHEMISTRY 2

" ' The Principles of Chemistry ' is a rare book, and
only to be had either by advertising for it as wanted,
say in Morning Light, or by giving Mr Speirs a
commission to get it.

" May I briefly remark that you cannot, by
following modern science, enter Swedenborg's track.
This is nowhere more shewn than in Chemistry.
The end and use of modern chemistry is analytic
knowledge of substances, whether for manufacturing
purposes, or for exploration of nature. The quest
is for primitive substances ; and when these are

him in his garden, that he could converse with their departed
mother whenever he pleased." It was told us by the late Mr Charles
Augustus Tulk, hut we have no document for it, that our author
used to say that he had seen his allotted wife in the spiritual world,
who was waiting for him, and under her mortal name had been a.
Countess Gyllenborg (*tc)."

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, September 18, 1847.

2 Letter to Mr John Marten, March 19, 1896.

236 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

found, their combination or synthesis comes. The
laws of this are greatly investigated.

" Swedenborg's was another Chemistry, of in-
violate forms, with properties from the forms ; as
man and woman have properties from their forms :
and there are no simple substances. Simple sub-
stances are the ultimates of destruction : atoms you
can't cut. Swedenborg's Forms are simple or com-
pound functions, which must be maintained in the
Theory, because they are mineral-organic. The
bed of all this is Geometry actuated, in each case,
by a central particular fire.

" Beware of dismissing Light from your view of
nature. Energy won't supply its place. Light and
Heat are the unchangeable representants and corres-
pondences of Love and Wisdom, divine."

EMERSON'S " SWEDENBORG OR THE MYSTIC " *

" I am much your debtor for a copy of your
Poems transmitted to me by your London Publisher,
and from which I have derived health and pleasure.
I know of no writer equal to you for transporting
the denizen of the city spiritually into the country,
and giving him the benefit of ' that liberty, the
air,' together with a thousand other needed en-
franchisements. But I dare not attempt to criticize
you. One thing, however, strikes me profoundly,

1 Letter to Mr R. W. Emerson, March 1, 1841.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 237

and I do not see any of your critics notice it : I mean
your profound poetical analysis of natural and
scientific truth. For instance, how sharply yet
largely true your recount of the physiology of the
loving eye in that Poem entitled 6 Initial Love.' l

" But I must not trust myself to say more for fear
I should awkwardly be paying you some intended
compliment from which you might shrink with
dislike.

" Although you state that your Swedenborgian
shelves are full, I have ventured still to send through
Mr Clapp a thin volume of the same series, hoping
that you will gently squeeze it into a place among
the rest. . . .

" Is your lecture on Swedenborg published yet ?
If not, and if it is to appear as Copyright in England,
might I suggest that, were it to be issued per se,
it would probably command a very extensive sale
among the readers of that Author in this country.

1 ' f Leave his weeds and heed his eyes,
All the rest he can disguise.
In the pit of his eyes a spark
Would bring back day if it were dark ;
And, if I tell you all my thought,
Though I comprehend it not,
In those unfathomable orbs,
Every function he absorbs.
He doth eat, and drink, and fish, and shoot,
And write, and reason, and compute,
And ride, and run, and have, and hold,
And whine, and flatter, and regret,
And kiss and couple and beget,
By those roving eyeballs bold."

238 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

I should be happy to do all I could to commend it
to a large audience."

SWEDENBORG'S " HEAVEN AND HELL " TRANSLATED
INTO ICELANDIC 1

" DEAR DR WILKINSON, I beg to acknowledge
the receipt of your letter enclosing two others from
your Icelandic friend. I will take the first oppor-
tunity of forwarding them to the Repository and
obtain their insertion in the next number, if it be
not at present too late ; or if it be, they can appear
in the number for November.

" I have no doubt the Committee of the Swedenborg
Society will be rejoiced to receive the glad tidings
they contain, and, for myself, I cannot but feel
most humbly thankful to Divine Providence for
such a result.

" I do not know when the Committee next meet,
but if you have any proposition to make with respeet
to the translation into Icelandic of the ' Heaven
and Hell,' I have no doubt of its favourable reception
by the Committee and the necessary funds being
provided.

"If your mind is made up on this subject, I
would suggest your writing a letter to me, as you
did before, giving some idea of the amount of the
funds and the time required, and engaging, as you

1 Letter from the Rev. Augustus Clissold, September 11, 1871.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN 239

were kind enough to do before, that the translation
into Icelandic shall be a faithful one. This letter
I will then lay before the Committee, and I feel
sure they will be ready to carry out your wishes
and those of the Icelanders. I am, dear sir, yours
very truly, " AUGUSTUS CLISSOLD."

The translation was duly preformed by Mr Ion
a Hjaltalin.

CATHOLICITY l

" This morning's paper contains Cardinal Newman's
Address, on his reception of the Purple. It is
Liberalism in Religion. A great deal that he says
is too true ; but the error of Sect cannot be cured
by adopting Rome, which is the Sect of Sects ; and
her apostacy the cause of the divisions in Christendom
and of the great gulf in it, on the other side of which
stands the bold Realm of Infidelity. Unitary Truth
from Love, which can only come by a new Dispensa-
tion from the Lord, is the only Oneness that is needed
or possible."

DR LIVINGSTONE 2

" Dr Livingstone entered the spiritual world on
the 15th of last August. What a strange fire of
adventure possessed him, to spend all his old days in

1 Letter to Mrs Wilkinson, May 13, 1879.

2 Letter to Mrs Wilkinson, January 28, 1874.

240 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

battling with swamp and wood and wilderness after
Geographical Truth ! It seems an outre genius ; and
yet, if he was commissioned from within as the
pioneer of African progress, so great an end elevates
his direful wanderings into a religious life. Peace
be with him now ! "

INFLUX l

"I have just finished 'Barnaby Rudge,' and a
wonderful book it is. How the new Light and Love
shine in it, and how the new Spiritual Power stoops
down in it, and almost makes itself manifest for
what it is ! Influx influx is given to men as it
was not given before."

NIAGARA 2

" Let me say in these hurried words that Niagara,
mighty and perpetual, suggests to me even more
(in this mood of mine) than it shows to me. It even
partly lulls and partly stuns me into sleep about its
enormous self. And I think of what the Descent of
things is ; of the Architecture that descends ; of
the Holy City, New Jerusalem ; and in the immense
rainbows that span the heaven over the Falls here ;
that lie mile- wide on the river: that shimmer as
they are fed by perpetual spray and mist, I remember,

1 Letter to Mrs Wilkinson, August 24, 1872.

2 Letter to Mrs Wilkinson, September 6, 1869.

THE SWEDENBORGIAN

" Her light was like unto a stone most precious " :
and in the Rainbows dissolved in the air I remember
the same : and in all, not omitting the vivid and
ever-varied thunders, and the huge sperm and
beauty of ever new Form, I catch a suggestion
of that substantial River of Influx which in
one little world and small Voice is the Holy
Ghost.

These are the thoughts I had of Descent ; very
different from those of Mont Blanc, or those of
Ascent."

DARWIN'S FUNCTIONS l

" I have just finished ' The Life and Letters of
Charles Darwin,' by his son. Mistaken, as I believe
he was, in discarding Revelation, and rejecting Deity
because he could not find Him out to perfection,
the life of the man leads me to think that there was
a providential purpose worked out by his permitted
wilfulness. One end seems to be that he brought the
whole mind of Europe down to consider facts, and
on them to crucify Dogmas. Had he understood the
' Doctrine of Uses,' as coming from above, he would
have begun a great fabric : but he would not have
done what he has done, and the opposing Ecclesiasms
would have resisted, which they are not now doing.
He has contributed to their death.

1 Letter to Mr John Thomson, September 25, 1895.
Q

JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

FICTION l

" What you say of Novels and their retreat into
unlocked for Uses I heartily endorse. Without
profanity, by fictional stories, everything in the
sensual mind can be freely talked over, and anger
from dogmas disappears where freedom reigns all
round. The word 6 Agnostic ' is for this reason better
than ' Atheist,' because its venom is withdrawn
in its novelty of possibly pleaded harmlessness.

" Have you, in the New Church Magazine for
July, seen my review of Richard Whiteing's ' Number
5 John Street ' ? He writes me that of the seventy
great reviews he has had in the press of Great Britain
and America my interpretation has given him more
thought than all the rest, and that he keeps it by
him to study it. ... 2

" I am rather tired now, after my four months'
prayer, to be helped in my " Isis and Osiris in the
Book of Respirations." For fifty years I have been
on this theme in its general application of Breath-
ing. Now I have been enabled to converse with it
in most special embraces."

1 Letter to the Rev. P. Melville, B.D., September 25, 1899.

2 On March 28 of the same year, Wilkinson wrote to Dr Melville :
" I am not going on with my little Essay on the Egypt of Corre-
spondence. It has been interrupted by a very remarkable Book by
Richard Whiteing, ' Number 5 John Street.' I have written a
Swedenborgian View of it. It deserves it, for it is an inspiration,
or refluxion for purposes of use, of the Hades within and above us.
It may be published, and if so you shall see it. Mr Whiteing is an
intimate friend of our house, and he may have been infected with the
( Apocalypse Revealed ' which I have lent him/'

CHAPTER III

HOMOEOPATHY AND KINDRED DEBATABLE MATTERS

WE have seen something of Garth Wilkinson's
adoption of the practice of Homoeopathy in the
chapter devoted to his life. It occupied so large
a place in his total of work done that, in a full
consideration of the man, it needs to be treated
in more detail.

The credit of founding a new method of drug-
selection in the treatment of disease belongs to
Samuel Hahnemann, who was born in 1755 and lived
until 1843. Possessed of at least a double dose of
" divine discontent " with the empiric practice of
his day, Hahnemann recognized the dual action of
drugs in the contradictory and confusing account
of the effects of Cinchona, as given in a work on
Materia Medica which he was engaged in translating
from English into German. He investigated and
developed the idea thus presented to him until
he established his famous law Similia similibus
curentur. The system of medicine based upon this
law involves the proving of drugs upon healthy
persons (Hahnemann's " Pure Materia Medica ") and
the use of drug-symptoms thus developed as an index

243

JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

to the cure of similar disease-symptoms observed in
the sick. As a logical correlative to the system upon
which the drug was chosen, its dose for the sick is
less than that sufficient to produce its characteristic
effects in the healthy prover.

Partly by reason of the innate conservatism of the
medical mind, partly through the bitter controversial
methods of its discoverer, Homoeopathy has laboured
under professional discouragement from its first
beginning to the present day. It may claim to have
profoundly modified practice : the bleeding lancet
is no longer to be found in the waistcoat pocket of
every medical student; the significance of the
barber's pole and basin has become a matter of
archaeology ; the old lengthy and murderous pre-
scription is almost extinct ; drugs and doses intro-
duced by Hahnemann and his followers are in daily
use. But the system is far from general recognition ;
and those who systematically follow its law are still
made to remember that, though they are in the
medical profession and enjoy such scanty privileges
as that profession bestows, they are far from sharing
its blood-brotherhood.

The introduction of Homoeopathy evoked a storm
of protest. The profit of those who made shrines
in precious metals to the old gods was endangered,
and those who taught the new way were threatened
with the magistrate. Dr Quin, who brought the
Hahnemannian doctrine and practice to England in

HOMOEOPATHY 245

1837, found patients in plenty at once and profes-
sional followers more slowly. These latter had to
face opposition both overt and covert, professional
ostracism and outrageous criticism. They were
knaves or fools, lucky if they escaped condemnation
under both headings. If a patient died under the
care of one of their number, it was darkly hinted
that a verdict of manslaughter should follow. It
needed, therefore, no slight resolution, no tepid
conviction, in the man who professed himself a
homoeopath in the early " forties." The unpopu-
larity of a cause had, however, never deterred
Wilkinson from espousing it for reason shown : and
at the time of his conversion he had been long dis-
satisfied alike with the ordinary practice of his pro-
fession and his own position therein. Pitchforked
into the study of medicine by his father when a mere
boy, sickened at the crude practice to which he was
introduced in his apprenticeship, he engaged in the
struggle for maintenance without any of that timely
assistance which ensures a good beginning and goes
far to further, if it cannot command, a prosperous
career. It is little wonder that the early days of
Wilkinson's practice were not marked either by
enthusiasm on his part or any greedy acceptance
on the part of the patient public. The work of a
general practitioner in the " thirties " approximated
much more to that of the chemist than is to-day
the case : he had to recommend the copious con-

246 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

sumption of physic, for it was from physic that he
derived profit. Wilkinson was possessed of two
qualities incompatible to the foundation of a suc-
cessful practice upon such lines, a conscience and
" a horror of promiscuous drugging." His enthusi-
asm was reserved for work in matters Swedenborgian,
and he eked out what came to him through labour
in that capacity by means of professional work
repugnant alike to his taste and his higher nature.
There is no statement in his correspondence which
gives a date when homoeopathy first came under
Wilkinson's notice, but a letter from a friend in
1844 congratulates him on his intention to investigate
the subject. In December of the same year Wil-
kinson writes to Mr Henry James that his only son
is dangerously ill with bronchitis and whooping
cough. " We have committed him to Homoeopathy,
and called in Dr Durnford who has been very kind
in his attentions, although but little marked im-
provement has yet taken place." Two years later,
he is found writing to his absent wife of a discussion
with a medical friend who " appeared in no way
bigoted against the subject." But he gives a lively
and presumably accurate account of the means by
which he was brought to consider Hahnemann's
system of treatmemt, in "War, Cholera and the
Ministry of Health," written in 1854. The pamphlet
which perhaps gives the best example of Wilkinson's
" early manner," virtually aimed at recommend-

HOMOEOPATHY 247

ing Homoeopathy to recognition by the Public
Services. 1

" The fact is that nurses have a great many things
put upon them which either ought to be undone, or
the doctors ought to do them for themselves. Many
a medicine given to children is so chokingly horrible
that a medical practitioner ought to be present to
count the pulse and to watch the countenance ; just
as is properly the case at a military flogging. In
my old days I have seen a nurse resign the trembling
spoon or cup to the doctor, and say in the boldness
of humane terror : ' Sir, give it yourself.' My own
conversion to homoeopathy was attended with one
of these experiences. Our eldest child, a baby then,
was attacked in the night with a sudden bronchitis,
attended with great wheezing and oppression. My
wife and I sat on end in bed in sanitary conjugal
quorum. I ordered ipecacuanha wine as an emetic,
and I went downstairs to the surgery and fetched it.
There it stood by the bedside, and the question was,
who should give it ? My wife said nothing, and I
broke a short silence by observing that the medicine
was there. She then said : c Well ! ' and another
silence ensued. I too said ' Well ! ' and again we
were silent. At length Mrs W. said : ' What are
you going to do ? ' I said : c What are you going
to do ? " she said she was not going to give the
child that medicine. I felt indignant in all my

1 " War, Cholera and the Ministry of Health," p. 27, 1854.

248 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

professional frame, and I told her that the ordering
of medicine was the doctor's department, that it
was the business of mothers and nurses to give it.
She replied that I was not only doctor here, but also
father and nurse, and that I must do it or it would
not be done ; and she added also, that she had no
faith in that stuff ; and furthermore that she was
glad now that I had seen at home what burdens were
daily laid on parents and nurses when I went away
from house to house, leaving such things to be trans-
acted between my visits. I thought of the denuncia-
tion in the Gospel against those who lay on grievous
burdens, which themselves will not touch with one
of their fingers ; and I could not but admire her
disobedience. But she did not stop here, but told
me that for long (she had hinted this before) she had
felt a repugnance to my practice, and that this very
occasion was sent, partly to oblige me to look into
that new thing called Homoeopathy. The upshot
of the particular case was that my wife gave a piece
of ipecacuanha, such as would pass through the eye
of a needle, to the child ; and a good and homoeo-
pathic remedy it was ; after which, the oppression
of the breathing passed away. The circumstance
made an impression on my mind, and I now record
it, being sure as day that, humble and simple as it
is, it will leave a mark on the minds of mothers.
Think, then, mothers, fathers and nurses, what
a blessing it is to you to get rid at one blow of all

HOMCEOPATHY 249

these difficult and painful duties which the old
practice enjoins upon you ! "

In December 1850 he writes to his father of
gradually introducing homoeopathy into his practice,
and says that " nearly all the little success I have
enjoyed has arisen from and in the new practice."
In 1852 he writes more strongly on the subject.

" My business increases beyond expectation : it
seems going on rapidly for 2000 a year. Homoeo-
pathy, into which Emma compelled me, has for the
first time caused me really to love my noble Profes-
sion. To me now there is no calling like it. It
brings down not only riches, but, what is far more,
blessings upon him that exercises it aright ; and as
for intellectual advancement, which I have always
loved, I have learned to be sure that a man's own
business is the finest school in which his mind can
be trained. The truths of Medicine are, then, those
which above all others I pray God to show me
in order that I may find healing on their wings.

" Of course, with so large a practice, I require
to undergo many expenses. . . . But practice
increases far more rapidly than expense, and I am
in great hopes of being able, after this year, to put
by something handsome for a rainy day.

" You will not be surprised to hear that I have no
leisure for any avocations but those of my profession.
It engages me morning, noon and night ; excepting
on Sundays, when I never go out, if I can avoid it.

250 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

However, in the course of my rides, I make many
cursory but agreeable studies, particularly in Botany,
respecting which I cherish some designs. Homoeo-
pathy has led me to the study of the old Herbals of
various countries, and I see in them an unlimited
extension of the Homoeopathic medicine. England
is particularly rich in this kind of lore, and it is
only to be lamented that in our accredited
books of Botany, this really useful department
of knowledge of the vegetable world is either left
out or treated with contempt. But all things will
come in time. At present I am studying the
Mistletoe, with a view to its medical use."
In the same year he wrote to Mr James : x
" My life now is for the most part a routine.
Practice increases month by month ; and the prospects
of income are good. The pleasures of skill also attend
me, whenever God gives any of the skill. What is
best, I take a leading interest in my dear Medicine,
and especially in Homoeopathy : and I reckon myself
truly fortunate to be able at length to connect my
mind to my daily work ; and to see in the latter a
most ample field for the exercise of my thoughts.
I am even not without hopes that I may be able to
improve practice somewhat.

" If it please God to afford me the possibility, I
shall take one summer holiday in New York, if only
to shake you and yours by the hand. It is a part of

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, November 14, 1852.

HOMCEOPATHY 251

my medical creed that a medical man cannot do
justice to his year unless he recreates himself for a
few weeks in the best season. This I shall act upon
as soon as I can. And your country shall have one
of my first fortnights. 1

" My chief studies at present are Homoeopathy,
Botany, as connected with the popular medical use
of Plants, the Herbals of all nations and their avail-
ability for practice ; lastly, the physical and physio-
logical and the pathogenetic characters of substances,
and the correspondence between these various
characters. Thus, for example, I want to see in the
growth and character of a plant the very double of
the effects which it produces upon the animal body.
Now this, with practice and Northern Languages,
is what my little life is about."

It is a scheme of pursuits large enough to occupy
the mind of a busy man. Wilkinson had " found
himself " medically, just as he had " found himself "
theologically some years earlier ; and it is plain that
the theology and the medicine have an essential
connection. It is plain, too, that the stricter limits
of homoeopathy, which demand that the drugs pre-
scribed shall have been proved on the healthy body,
were not entirely to his taste. In this, as in all
things, Wilkinson was eclectic and transcendental,
ready to advance beyond the letter of his master
when he had himself assimilated the spirit.

1 It was not until 1869, however, that Wilkinson visited the United
States.

252 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

1 " Do you know that I am going out of the bounds
of Homoeopathy in the use of medicaments ? I
find that the old Herbals give note of a number of
plants and the like, useful for certain maladies ;
and the use descended from ancient time and well
attested. Now, what but pedantry should prevent
anyone from curing by this prestige ? Why not pre-
pare the herbs Homceopathically, and use them by
tradition ? When they have been also proved upon
the healthy body, so much the better; but why
wait for that ? The fact of cure is just as scientific
as, and more direct than, the fact of pathogenesy.
Here is a matter that has been neglected, and that
I must work, as being of import to human health."

In the meantime, if Wilkinson proclaimed him-
self unconcerned with strict orthodoxy towards the
creed of his adoption, he was made conscious of his
unorthodoxy towards the traditional practice of
his profession ; and that too was a matter which
troubled him little.

2 " The medical profession is indeed bitter against
Homoeopathy : and they are to be excused, for they
are considerable losers by it. The Homoeopathic
practitioners, on the other hand, are in a state of
equanimity and good humour, and find it not very
difficult to love their enemies, when the public and
success are so markedly in their own favour. Here

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, December 30, 1852.

2 Letter to his Father, January 28, 1852.

HOMCEOPATHY

in this neighbourhood I have no competitors : the
old practitioners do me no harm, but compete
seriously with each other : and I, by sitting still,
reap the benefit of their divisions. This is going on
at an increased ratio every year, and must, in the
end, work a vital alteration in the position of what
now regards itself as Orthodox Medicine. Apropos,
however, of which orthodoxy, it is as new in point
of time, if not of truth, as Homoeopathy itself. For,
were the Garths and the Boerhaves to peep down
upon us now, they would never recognize the present
Rulers of Medicine as their lineal descendants."

His reply to his experience of the " Odium
Medicum " was the delivery and publication of an
Address on " Unlicensed Medicine." a whole-hearted
attack on his own profession, wherein he charged it
with narrowness of mind and self-interested policy,
with neglect of progress and with surgical mutilation
undertaken for the profit of the operator rather than
that of the patient. He advocated reform by com-
plete discharterment of medicine, leaving it free for
all men to practise at their peril, subject to punish-
ment for recklessness or culpable negligence. It
was written, we may surmise, rather for the sake of
the indictment than in any expectation of securing
either conviction or reform. Concerning it, he
wrote : x

" I will send you the Address on * Unlicensed

1 Letter to his Father, December 15, 1855.

JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

Medicine ' when I get a copy : I have none by me,
but have ordered a supply from the Publishers.
In estimating the prudence of the Tract, it is to be
borne in mind that I am not in a usual position ;
but that the other school of Medicine already bans
me and all similar persons. Did I belong to the
established class, such an address would indeed be
the height of imprudence."

Upon the question of dose in treatment, Wilkinson
was among what even the homoeopaths reckon
" high dilutionists," prescribing almost always on a
centesimal scale and usually far along it. In a
" lay " consideration of his medical work, it will be
enough to quote his opinion as given to a " lay "
correspondent, and to add that his habitual use of
drugs tended ever to become more and more im-
material.

1 " To what you say about small doses Homoeo-
pathic and large doses ditto, I have only one thing
to answer, that I find my minute potions do their
work surely, swiftly, and sweetly. If others find
bigger things do the same, there is not any quarrel
between us. But I do aver and maintain my own
position. Every day's practice confirms me in the
thought that, if the right remedy is hit, the quantity
is a secondary affair ; though also the quantity,
in that case, by all the rules of causes, may be smaller
than in the other case of inexacter skill.

1 Letter to Mr Henry James, February 8, 1855.

HOMOEOPATHY 255

"But my object, my grand wish, in the little
Book, 1 is to show that Medicine can be organized
and applied to nations by Homeopathy, and as yet
by no other claimant. This argument, if it be im-
pregnable, casts back a powerful confirmation on
Homeopathy itself, and thrills it through with
public virtue.

" You, more than any other man, led me into
Homoeopathy, and if you are lapsing away from it,
I shall think it my duty to take your Senility into
custody and to keep you by me in an old man's
chair of credulity, until you can start young again
into faith."

But the main point of interest in Wilkinson's
adoption of Homoeopathy lies in the similarity which
can be plainly seen in his theological and medical
creed. The doctrine of correspondences is the
working key of the New Church attitude toward
God and conduct. In matters medical, the corres-
pondence of drug effects and disease effects is the
whole of the Homoeopathic practice. This similarity
was a striking one to Wilkinson, whose attachment
to medicine had never been strongly marked. The
convinced and enthusiastic followers of Swedenborg
found the system of Hahnemann a scientific state-
ment of the doctrine of correspondences in terms
of medicine. He did not, however, adopt it per
saltum on purely theoretic grounds, but examined

1 " War, Cholera and the Ministry of Health."

256 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

it and tested it on his patients. By degrees he found
himself leaning ever more toward the homoeopathic
law, and ever less addicted to the routine practice
of the time : patients flocked to him : he was for
the first time happy in being " able to connect his
mind to his work." Yet in this, as in other things,
he stood alone. There were, he felt, possibilities of
extension and development in Homoeopathy ; and
he was characteristically eager to make the summit
of Hahnemann's attainment the " jumping off place "
into a new conquest over disease by a transcendental
extension of the law of similars. But it was the
doctrine of correspondences which made and kept
him a Homceopathist ; and traces of the bond
between his religious and medical creed are con-
stantly cropping up in the letters and books which
he wrote. It is much in evidence in the following
quotation from " Swedenborg among the Doctors "
an open letter to Dr Cooper at whose house Wilkinson
had been invited to a medical symposium in 1895.
He was unable to attend, but sent what he afterwards
expanded into a tract to represent his views.

"To command the country of the soul, that is,
the human body, a military intellect, seeing the
anarchy and disorder of scientism, its want of a
Ruling Soul, could not but discern as a strategic
necessity, that it was necessary to lay down new
ways by which he might be led to such unrecognized
Ruler, and gain access to her palace, and support

HOMOEOPATHY 257

and sanction from her power. Every march of
humanity requires new roads if there are none laid
down already. Hahnemann, coming into empirical
and chaotic medicine, found an old disused road
in Hippocrates, ' Similia similibus curenturj and
following it resolutely, he founded a new medical
Kingdom. Our Art, Homoeopathy, is thus, by
virtue of having a mental highway through it, a
stable possession of the rational faculty. Let this
instance, familiar to us, show the importance, or
rather indispensable necessity, of doctrinal Road-
making ; we may say, of iron roads.

" Under stress of this, Swedenborg gratified what
was then his life's love, the prosecution of the quest
of the soul by rational divination of her attributes
from her faculties in the body. The new ways by
which he must travel are not, however, easy to him
to find. He has ' to discover, disengage and bring
them forth, by the most intense application and
study.' They are new doctrines, for doctrines always
lead, guide and lead on and on : true doctrines
namely. These might always be summed up in
the injunction, ' Similia, similibus divinentur ' or
' interpretenturS ' They are the doctrines of forms,
of order and degrees, of series and society, of com-
munication and influx, of correspondence and repre-
sentation, and of modification.' These doctrines
or teachings are the way to a Rational Psychology,
or approximate knowledge of the Soul."

258 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

The same view is expressed in a more practical
connection in the following letter to an old friend : x

44 DEAR FRIEND, I rejoice to hear that you are
walking miles, and that you have a rest from news-
papers and books. But I cannot divine why you
should not cure yourself by homoeopathic coincid-
ences which are natural and scientific correspond-
ences, and which follow the divine way of ceasing
medicinally first to do any evil, and then are gifted
to do good. Were you to send to the homoeopathic
chemist in Glasgow for a half-ounce bottle of Antim.
Tart, pilules, and take three, night and morning, in
a wineglassful of hot water, you would, in my belief,
cease to be the slave of damp, and brain would
animate, and lung would respire. Who can say
that the Lord's arm is interfered with by using the
vanishing point of medicine, when it becomes mental
scientific correspondences ? Hot bricks, etc., etc.,
are means ; but so also is that practice which takes
up deadly serpents, and forbids their harming and
then does their good. For they have good. As
E. S. says, they absorb malignities. Yours,

" J. J. GARTH WILKINSON."

Correspondences and homoeopathy are again cor-
related in this letter to a friend whose daughter was
in trouble with curvature of the spine. It is interest-

1 Letter to Mr J. Thomson, June 7, 1898.

HOMOEOPATHY 259

ing, too, to see that the writer, at the age of 84, is
ready to endorse the bicycle for the use of women.

" I sympathize with you heartily in your per-
plexity about your dear Daughter's treatment. You
know I am a resolved Homoeopath, and so far
as drugs go, I am confirmed in this name by the
immeasurably greater harmlessness and success
of the treatment by the science of correspond-
ences intuitively and experimentally given through
Hahnemann. So I should certainly advise medicine
in that line in spinal curvature. Other treatment
also. But without knowing the extent of the
curvature, it is difficult to suggest or sanction. . . .

" With respect to Cycling, I am not at all dis-
posed to endorse her opinion that no woman should
cycle. It is founded on no experience ; and against
it there is the fact that women cycle better than men.
Deprived of the masculine seat on the horse, why
should not woman be bilateral on these terrene skates
of steel ? My granddaughters, just returned from
Coblenz, tell me that their brother, Captain Pertz,
holds that the ladies beat the officers, their hus-
bands, in cycling. But evidently in a young
lady of 17 with a weak spine, fatigue should be
avoided."

Wilkinson's spiritualized and transcendal view
of medicine, and the essential unity of his theological
and medical outlook come out very clearly too in
the following letter.

260 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

1 " I received your fine volume, < The Twelve Tissue
Remedies of Schussler,' soon after the arrival of your
letter, and I have every reason to thank you for it.
I have read Part I. with attention, and use the
Body of the Book in my now small opportunities of
practice. And later on, if my year of life be still
prolonged, your Remarks may help me greatly in
a few words which I desire to leave respecting
Homoeopathy.

" Schussler is vague both in his idea of the twelve
salts in their existence in the blood, and also as
regards the causation of the effects of the same salts
as administered in his 6th triturations. Only one
man that I know of propounded an organic view,
which at last, with a vital end internal to it, must
be the clear and central intuition. That one man
was Swedenborg. His statement that the atom of
common salt is the basement on which the blood-
globule is built up the dead, useful, natural world
of it assigns place and function to this cell-salt.
And the further information that there are aerial
and etherial salts corresponding and similarly basic
in the higher blood-architectures is a higher stretch
than any doctrine of dilutions. What may be the
ultimate fate of this spiritually-ingenious theory ?
At least it must stimulate thoughts. Whatever
the bone of the blood, can it be diseased, so as to set
up a crooked blood-spine, involving a weak nerve

1 Letter to Dr Boericke, October 19, 1893.

HOMOEOPATHY

influx and dwarfish deformed nature in the atomic
blood itself ? (One) such as a weak deformed spine
may involve in the general body ?

" And then how does an infinitesimal cell- salt
correct aberrations of such salts in the organism ?
Here we want a theory of Homoeopathy; for
Schussler's salts all act by their likeness to their
fellow-salts suffering and crying out in the body.
Through my dear R. E. Dudgeon, I have just re-
perused the * Organon,' translated by him ; but
Hahnemann's explanation of Homreopathy is not a
likely one, for how can the slight monition of an
infinitesimal dose be a more powerful state than the
diseased action which it fronts and routs ? David's
pebble from the Brook which smote Goliath was not
naturally stronger than he, but spiritually. So
Homoeopathy needs a spiritual, or natural-spiritual,
explanation. So also does Catalysis. A doctrine
of regeneration is needed. That can alter things
from the smallest beginnings, and rectify a salt that
has lost its character, and make the blood upright.
To follow out this Swedenborgian opening will be
the work of future time. I want to think of it, if
my time allows.

" The salts in Plants must be prepared by and
in organization for acting peculiarly on animal
organization : and mineral salts themselves must
have a peculiar field.

" On the subject of plant-salts, I will mention that

262 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

I have long used the silica which is deposited in the
bottoms of the manifold cases of the large bamboos
in India : and, having some, I will send you a
specimen. I have used it with success where silica
is indicated, but especially in acute, rather than in
chronic, cases."

Wilkinson's scientific contributions to the litera-
ture of the school of medicine to which he belonged
have been enumerated in the chapter which deals
with his biography : they were marked by all his
usual power of expression and definition of aim.
He contributed also to the number of drugs used by
the homoeopath. On one of his Icelandic journeys
he was struck by the frequency of caries and necrosis
among the natives living in the volcanic regions and
attributed the prevalence of these diseases to the
use of water which had percolated through lava.
Recognizing the bearing of the homoeopathic law
upon this observation, he was led to prepare and
prescribe Hekla lava as a drug for similar cases
otherwise induced ; and the drug has justified its
selection and maintained its place in its own limited
field. In 1857 he also introduced to use Glanderine
and Farcine, two nosodes or products from Veterinary
diseases. The use of such things was at that time
vilified and derided by those who opposed homoeo-
pathy, but Wilkinson lived to see the age of
Koch's various tuberculins and of the antidiptheritic
serum. The articles in which he advocated the use

HOMOEOPATHY 263

of these drugs may be found by the curious in " The
British Journal of Homoeopathy."

But, after all, the work of the practising physician
can only be traced partially in the professional press.
When once Wilkinson had embraced homoeopathy,
he recognized himself and was speedily recognized
by others as highly gifted in the treatment of disease.
From that time forward his practice was assured,
and he numbered people of influence and position
among his patients. Indeed, to the time of his death,
there were those who would not allow him to retire
altogether from attending them : there was always
a, residuum who refused to believe that he could not
and would not help them in their bodily ailments.
From 1850 to 1880 his practice was a large one :
after the death of Mrs Wilkinson in 1886, he with-
drew from it to a great extent. Reckoning from his
qualification in 1834, he was actively engaged in
medical work for fifty-two years : but to the end, as
we have said, he was more or less in touch with the
treatment of disease.

Perhaps, however, there was never a practitioner
of medicine who was less a member of the profession
at heart. Almost from the first he would have dis-
chartered that profession and have thrown the
treatment of the sick open to all who chose to engage
in it, holding them equally responsible whether
formally qualified or not. Degrees and diplomas
would have conveyed no privilege, had Wilkinson

264 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

been allowed his way. Surgery was ever an abomina-
tion to him. He not only abstained from practis-
ing it himself ; but he would have surrounded its
practice by others with narrow restrictions and
have checked its development : its abuse, as he
reckoned it, would have met with immediate and
proportionate punishment. His quarrel with char-
tered and licensed medicine gradually crystallized
itself around three subjects, vaccination, vivisection
and the working of the Contagious Diseases Act.
It is necessary that we should deal briefly with
Wilkinson's action with regard to each of these
subjects.

When his sister contracted smallpox in Wilkinson's
bachelor establishment, in the early summer of
1839, he wrote to his fiancee : " On Friday morning
I procured some lymph, and vaccinated all the
inmates, including myself ; and I am now most
desirous that you should be placed in safety by the
same process. How and when this is to be done we
must endeavour to determine." So it is clear that
at this time he was not opposed to either the theory
or practice of Jenner's inoculation, which had then
been before the world for some forty years.

His aversion can be told in his own words : " The
early history of my opposition to Vaccination is,
briefly, this I had not considered Vaccination a
question ; but practised it when required. About
1865 the Countess de Noailles assailed my conscience

HOMOEOPATHY 265

on the subject, and her earnestness forced me to study
it. She was backed by the late Mrs Gibbs, then Miss
Griffiths. Through Miss Griffiths, I sent the follow-
ing message to Madame de Noailles : ' Tell her
Ladyship that the question is comparatively un-
important. Vaccination is an infinitesimal affair.
Its reform will come in with greater reforms.' I
also wrote to Madame that the only short way of
getting rid of the medical vested interest was by
paying half a million or a million of money down
to the Profession, and buying the slaves, the people,
out, as the West Indian Blacks were brought out.

" After-studies extending over eighteen years have
convinced me that I was wrong in my estimate of
the smallness of the Vaccination question compared
with other Evils. As forced upon every British
Cradle, I see it is a monster instead of as a Poisonous
Midge ; a Devourer of Nations. As a Destroyer of
the Honesty and Humanity of Medicine, which is
through it a deeply degraded Profession. As a
Tyrant which is the Parent of a brood of Tyrants,
and through Pasteur and his like a Universal Pollu-
tion Master. As a Ghoul which sits upon Parliament,
and enforces Contamination by Law, and prepares
the way for endless violations of personal liberty
and sound sense at the bidding of cruel experts.
Not denying other forms of Social Wickedness, I
now, after careful study, regard Vaccination as one
of the greatest and deepest forms, abolishing the

266 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

last hope and resort of races, the new-born soundness
of the Human Body." l

The first trace of this fierce opposition discoverable
in Wilkinson's private correspondence occurs in a
letter to his wife, dated February 23, 1870.

'' There is, I hear, no truth in what the Paper
says about Government and the Vaccination Laws.
A storm is brewing such as they little expect. The
cases of dire injury from Vaccination are multiplying,
and the cases of violated parents, who, rightly or
wrongly it matters not, are agonized about their

little ones. Yesterday, Mrs got Miss

to ask me my opinion about Vaccination. They
insist upon doing her children, not yet out of whoop-
ing cough, or fining her ! The thing is too incon-
ceivably abominable to last. Let whoso will be
protected (?) by Vaccination be Vaccinated : but
is it in this day that others, against their hearts'
blood and their often terrible experiences and their

convictions, should be compelled ? Mrs was

moved to ask me by hearing such sad results from
Vaccination in her own circle. I advised her not
to have her child vaccinated."

Wilkinson gives two cases in his essay on Com-
pulsory Vaccination which may explain his attitude
toward the practice. The first of these appears
from the context to have occurred in 1863.

" Miss Edith Hutchinson, of Kensington, was

1 W. White, "The Story of a Great Delusion/' p. 549.

HOMOEOPATHY 267

vaccinated by the late eminent Dr Joseph Laurie.
The arm swelled enormously, and was hard like wood.
After a month it subsided, and then a putrid thrush
occurred, which disappeared after some weeks.
The disease was next transferred to the abdomen
and its lymphatic system ; and she died of great
purulent collections in its cellular tissues, the matter,
putrescent, voided by the bowels. I attended
the later stages of the case with Dr L. Vaccination,
careful conscientious vaccination, did it, as plainly
as fire burns. . . . Another case. My coachman's
child was vaccinated, and took it with erysipelas,
which overspread the body. The mother, who was
nursing it, took the erysipelas, and both nearly
died of it. I assert that this result of two long
and all but fatal illnesses was, in a poor man's
house, due to vaccination, and consequently due
to Parliament."

Wilkinson gave evidence before the House of
Commons' Committee on Vaccination in 1871. He
showed how, endowed and lucrative, the futility
of vaccination was concealed and denied, and how
reliance on its supposed efficacy paralyzed improve-
ment in treatment. He wrote pamphlet after
pamphlet against the evil as he saw it. A brief
specimen of his plain speaking, from his " Human
Science, good and evil, and its Works " (1876) will
suffice.

" This is blood assassination, and like a murderer's

268 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

life. The point, however, here is that this amazing
act is the homicidal insanity of a whole profession ;
and the reader is requested to study the correlation
of this sin with the horrible methods of acquiring
physiology now in vogue, and which surely prepare
the minds of men for similar darkness and its deeds
in medical practice."

But Wilkinson's zeal did not exhaust itself in his
public writings. It constrained him also in many
seemingly minor matters.

In 1874 he is found writing to a candidate for
the Coronership of his division of London as follows :

" I am solicited to vote for you for Coroner. I
do not vote for Dr H. (1) because a medical
coroner is not desirable; and (2) because Dr H. is
so identified with vaccination prosecutions that his
impartiality in cases of death from vaccination
could not be expected. How do you stand upon this
question ?

" Mr John Bright declares the Compulsory Vac-
cination Law to be ' monstrous,' and that it ought
to be repealed. One way of demonstrating its
monstrosity to the world is by fairly recording
its malfeasances in the verdicts of Coroners' juries
impartially charged by Coroners. A public word
from you on this point is desirable."

He interrogated the parliamentary candidates
in the same spirit, nor did his influential acquaint-
ances escape.

HOMCEOPATHY 269

1 " DEAR MR BRIGHT, In earnest petition I
address you on the Compulsory Vaccination question.
On that subject you have expressed opinion twice,
and your views have been circulated through the
press. You said the first time, ' The law is monstrous,
and ought to be repealed.' And you write to Mr
Tebb, ' I think your case one of great hardship, but
I fear I can do nothing to help you. These repeated
penalties are, in my view, most unjust, and I wish
the law were changed."

" I cannot understand that your feeling against
a ' monstrous ' law, with its ' most unjust ' penalties,
should produce your last expression of opinion.
You cannot help Mr Tebb personally, and he does
not expect it. But what we do expect is that when
John Bright finds a law monstrous and wishes its
repeal, and when his little finger, stoutly raised,
would encourage and help the whole of the persecuted
against that law, justice and mercy, as of old, as for
Ireland, as for India, should move him ; and silence,
be it ever so much desired by him, should be greatly
broken.

"It is not by ' fearing that you can do nothing
to help ' that you have been the friend of the poor
and oppressed since first I heard you as a young
man in the Anti-Corn-Law Agitation. It is not
in the ignominous night- cap of such fearing
that your great sword of words has slept when

1 Letter to Mr John Bright, December 17, 1877.

270 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

public evil was to be hewed down in the House of
Commons.

" Arise, and give us some of the fire of your true
heart here, in the name of the Lord, and He will
keep your heart young, and chase all fears in other
needful contests for the people. Your friend,

" J. J. GARTH WILKINSON."

It is not clear what pronouncement by Mr Ruskin
gave origin to this vigorous rejoinder from Wilkinson.

1 " I have no right to rejoin to so masterful a
dismissal as you give to the subject of vaccination.
But pardon me for remarking that I care nothing for
4 Codes of Lymph,' but abjure them ; and am only
concerned to protect the prime stream of all, the
blood of children, from pollution ; and the prime
air of all, the liberty of affection and conscience
in the home, from suffocation.

" Your Art Temple will stand on legs and not on
fantasies when you are not ashamed to take as
alternate pillars the substantial foundations of
human good. And you will rebuke the Circe of
Art, instead of aiding and abetting her, and will
teach artists to be men, when you traverse their
Art with religious duties involving their care and
attention to many unpleasant every-day disciplines,
which are the only correctives of Art against worldli-
ness, luxury and selfishness."

1 Letter to Mr John Ruekin, July 1, 1878.

HOMOEOPATHY 271

Wilkinson made many lasting friendships among
the enthusiastic opponents of Compulsory Vaccin-
ation. Among these were Professor Siljestrom,
writer of several Swedish tracts upon this subject,
who died in 1892, and Mr William Young, whose
work, as editor of the Vaccination Tracts, Wilkin-
son took up after his death and concerning whom
Wilkinson wrote the following biographical notice
for an Anti- Vaccination journal :

" THE LATE MR WILLIAM YOUNG.

44 Excepting that new men are often sent when
public exigency calls for them, it is difficult to
imagine how the gap caused by the decease of
William Young can be filled from the ranks of the
opponents of vaccination. He has stood in the
front, and if not the foremost of all, it was rather
because of his social station than from any defect
of quality as a leader.

44 He was a chemist and druggist, and kept a
shop. What did this imply when he joined the
movement against vaccination ? I knew him well
with a large and increasing family. It was
a tolerably flourishing shop in the Harrow-road.
It fell down from plain causes. The medical men
in the neighbourhood refused to send their pre-
scriptions to the counter of an anti-vaccinationist.
They ' boycotted ' his shop. He was driven from
it ; and was drifted along from neighbourhood to

JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

neighbourhood partly by the same cause. His
poverty compelled each act of movement. But he
was a real nobleman in every shop, true as steel
to his convictions. He lived the truths he knew,
and made them good. He belonged to the new
comity to the new order.

" I was associated with him in the Vaccination
Tracts. In the preparation of these he always
furnished me with a draft plan of each tract, and
suggested several of the pieces. But for him the
series would not have been completed. His urgency
moved it on and fed it with useful suggestions
of matter. His gentleness and modesty eliminated
differences of design, and produced equal authority
between us. Though suffering from something like
want all the time, he did the work with no expecta-
tion of even common wage.

" With a very frail body, he did not ask himself
how he was, but what the day's work was ? So
his industry was out of all proportion to his bodily
strength, as the most of us equate the industry and
the strength. He did not do more than he was
able, because he knew the law that the ability
is given in the doing. Every fresh occasion, and
they were incessantly arising, called forth a wise
and cogent word from him. Could the series of his
articles and leaflets be collected, they would form a
volume still useful to the cause, and displaying
a heart full of sympathy with outraged fathers,

HOMCEOPATHY

mothers, and infants, and a head with a statesman-
like vision of what would come to medical authority,
and to Governments that aided and abetted it.

" Nor was his attention or insight confined to
the vaccination tyranny, but he saw the downward
career of State-established medicine, and noted the
steps of the ladder which it is preparing for itself
into the abyss. He divined its alliance with Pasteur ;
and it is only a few weeks since I had a communica-
tion from him to make me acquainted with the
New Youth recorded by Brown-Sequard for himself
from the seed of dogs.

" He died, upon the whole, a neglected man ;
but not more neglected than in most cases where
rare unselfishness, humility, and honesty are com-
bined with poverty, in pleading, irrespective of all
personal consequences, the destruction of aggressive
tyranny, and the furthering of public good, especially
for the voiceless and the wailing, for the poor and
the needy. The monument of their emancipation
and bettering will rise for him, nay, has risen for
him, but not in these climates, and not in their
cathedrals.

" He has entered into his rest,' as they say. A
man, however, of no hurry, making no over-estimate
of what single human efforts can do in any age of
visible self-will and its down-rush, he can help us
from a higher ground to patience and perseverance
through the yet long night, and to a new youth

274, JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

of trust to God in ourselves, and to God and ourselves,
rather than to the confirmed senility of Royal
Commissions. Herein, we divine, will be a part
of his Rest.

' No flowers ' may well be underscored in such
an obituary. His path was not a flowery one ;
certainly not ' the primrose path to the everlasting
bonfire.' He trod on thorns to make the way smooth
and innocent for other people. If he can whisper
now he might say, ' Not flowers, but everywhere
Fruits.' And I will say what he never said, ' Ye
who can, be personally fruitful here ; ye who have
been with him in this holy cause of anti-vaccination,
think of the home left desolate now ; think of
his wife and children, in poverty now because of
his life-long devotion to the interests of all homes and
parental rights ; and of love and conscience conse-
crate come part of your abundance, or your ' two
mites,' to succour with money-offerings yes, with
money those he loved, and who sorely need your
assistance."

" Honour be to the noble memory of William
Young ! "

Many will consider that the agitation against
the Compulsory Vaccination of Infants was mis-
guided and futile : but few will deny to those who
took the leading part in it that they were thoroughly
honest in their convictions and earnest in their

HOMOEOPATHY 275

efforts, or that the ultimate outcome of their work
in the recognition of the " conscientious objector "
transcended anything which might, in the early
days, have been expected from it. Right or wrong
in his contentions, Wilkinson's attitude was forth-
right, insistent and uncompromising throughout ;
and to his work may be credited no small share
of the result attained.

Remarks of somewhat the same character may be
made concerning the share which Wilkinson took
in opposing the practice and legal licence of experi-
ments on living animals. His condemnation of
vivisection was heart-felt and outspoken, as was
his way, but we know of no instance where he
perverted truth or imparted prejudice. He wrote
some fugitive tracts on the subject, but his most
reasoned pronouncement will be found running
through " On Human Science, Good and Evil, and
its Works ; and on Divine Revelation and its
Works and Sciences," which appeared in 1876, the
year in which the " Vivisection Act " became law.
Wilkinson held strong views as to the limitations
of science ; his tendency was to mistrust chemical
and physical bases for vital processes ; and this
for him discounted the value of the results of vivi-
section. But had he held the general opinion of
his profession as to the value of those results, he
would still have regarded the processes by which
they were attained as impious and profane in the

276 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

deepest sense. It is not necessary to quote at length
from his published writings upon the subject : it
will suffice to give evidence of his feeling concerning
it from his private correspondence.

When Professor Tafel was bringing out his monu-
mental edition of Swedenborg's work upon " The
Brain," he received from Wilkinson hearty and
ungrudging assistance which was, by Wilkinson's
own wish, only acknowledged generally, without
mention of its extent or scope. The following
extracts from letters show Wilkinson's anxiety
that Swedenborg's name should not be brought
to bear in support of vivisection :

1 " I have just received the enclosed, which I
think you ought to read. I foresee that, without
care be exercised, Swedenborg's citation of horribly
cruel experiments on living animals will prejudice
his name in a way that nothing else has done, with
all those who uphold humanity to animals in this
country ; which is the stronghold of the ever-increas-
ing feeling against the atrocities of scientism. My
belief is that Swedenborg gained nothing for his
intuitions or inductions from the atrocious vivi-
sections which he cites. He flung them down as
a basis, but did not want them, except that they
were so much ' experience.' The whole love of
his writings is against the scientism of mere curiosity
as regards living beings ; and his theology continually

1 Letter to Dr Tafel, April 11, 1882.

HOMCEOPATHY 277

denounces the scientism of the Proprium as the
greatest mental antagonist to true perception."

1 " I have no intention of writing a Preface to
your work. All I should wish to do, with your
approval, is to give, in one paragraph, which you
may describe as a private communication from me,
my view of Swedenborg's possible standpoint with
regard to vivisection. To state that what he has
introduced into his work on the Brain does not show
what his position would be in the Vivisection con-
troversy of the present day. I do not think you would
object to this. Also, in the same pages, you might
confute it if you saw fit."

2 " I want you to read carefully the enclosed
pamphlet by Lawson Tait, which is the strongest
professional attack that has yet been made on
Vivisection. You once spoke to me of the ' abuse
of Vivisection ' : this pamphlet goes all the way
to show that there is no such thing in a good sense
as the Use of Vivisection. . . . It is a most serious
subject, and one may well hesitate before letting
the inference go forth that Swedenborg would now,
when the subject has been opened up, be reckoned
among the Vivisectors."

3 " I thank you very much for your letter on
Vivisection as related to Swedenborg's work on the
Brain. That letter alone might be sufficient, if it

1 Letter to Dr Tafel, April 21, 1882.

2 Letter to Dr Tafel, July 8, 1882.

3 Letter to Dr Tafel, July 20, 1882.

278 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

expressed any spiritual or moral horror of Vivi-
section. The work will lie under a ban unless that
is done, for the experiments recorded in it are
atrocious. And if Swedenborg arrived at his results
without such deeds, it would seem that he ought
not to be assumed as countenancing Vivisection
spiritually which is what it will ultimately come
to without some other reason being given for it
than his discoveries. If your work leads to the
supposition that he would join the Vivisectors now
that they are at the bar of Humanity, it will, I
believe, mislead the Youth of the New Church, who
are quite open to be misled ; as the recent discussion
in your Church shows.

" / should not like to be mentioned in connexion
with the work unless the contrary position, on the
humane ground, is clearly pointed out."

Although he was keenly interested in all that
went on around him, to the end of his long life,
Wilkinson's active interests were too definitely
predisposed to allow him to drift into " a party
man " in politics. He had always certain questions
which he wished to have ventilated, certain wrongs
(always the wrongs of others) which he wished to
have righted. Wherever he scented oppression,
there he championed the oppressed, and was ready
to range himself aside those who were like-minded.
Early in his life, his keen sense of humour played
in genial irony upon those with whom he differed.

HOMCEOPATHY 279

Later his unpopular predispositions brought about an
isolation which he keenly felt but never bewailed ;
and his method of attack was marked by stern but
reasoned invective. This was nowhere more obvious
than in the strong and public line which he took
concerning the Contagious Diseases Prevention Acts
of 1866 to 1869. These Acts provided for the
compulsory examination of prostitutes in garrison
towns by medical men, appointed for that purpose,
and the segregation of those found dangerous to
the community. This was regarded as state re-
cognition of the evil which it was designed to check.
Such measures had been common on the Continent,
but their adoption in England was new, and it led
to long and loud objection from many people and on
many grounds. Wilkinson saw in it an outrage
on womanhood at the instance of the medical pro-
fession who, through the Royal Colleges of Physicians
and Surgeons, had memorialized Government in
favour of extension of the areas to be affected, in
1869. He was soon characteristically busy, both
publicly and privately, alone and in conjunction with
others, in efforts to bring about the repeal of the
laws in question.

In 1870 he issued a pamphlet on "The forcible
Introspection of Women for the Army and Navy,
considered physically," of which some mention has
been made in the first chapter. In it he spared
no effort to inspire pity for those whom he regarded

280 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

as oppressed, and disgust against those whom he saw
as their oppressors. It is unnecessary to quote
what was intentionally painful in its effect upon
the reader.

This pamphlet and another entitled " A Free State
and Free Medicine " were t Wilkinson's contributions
to the agitation for the repeal of the Contagious
Diseases Acts. They were highly approved by
the associations working to that end, as the following
letter from Mrs Josephine Butler, one of the prime
movers therein, will show :

1 " I have read with great pleasure your tract,
" A Free State and Free Medicine," and thank you
with all my heart for your words. I wish we could
have the pages relating to the C.D. Acts reprinted
alone for our present purpose : they are so forcible.

' Yes, you say truly, our reasons for opposing
the Acts are reasons of fire which will burn up any
House of Commons which has not its legislation
founded on a rock.

" 1 see the movement is beginning which I have
long anticipated among the women of France. I
should like to go over and help them to build
barricades, if need be, and to roast alive in the
Tuilerie Gardens the Inspectors of Women, with
their implements, as the Women of the Great Revolu-
tion roasted Lafayette's horse ! . . .

" I wish I could tell you what I have lately seen

1 Letter from Mrs Josephine Butler, April 24, ? 1871.

HOMOEOPATHY 281

and heard in Kent. I want to tell some good doctor
what the women tell me of their bodily sufferings."

An old friend and patient, Francis W. Newman,
the brother of the Cardinal, also wrote, in the follow-
ing terms :

1 " Your pamphlet on ' Introspection, etc.,' reached
me as I was starting for Manchester, to take part
in meetings against this very matter and against
Compulsory Vaccination. I read it in the train.
On my return home, after staying with friends in
two places, I found on my table your liberal parcel
of twenty-five copies of the same pamphlet. My
problem now is, how to distribute them judiciously.
. . . But my immediate business is to express my
thanks and my sense of the value of your brave
contribution to truth, justice and mercy. As a
man full grown in mind, you fearlessly assume your
own style, which is neither mine nor that of any
other man, but strictly yours ; and, as such, will
give material for irrelevant attack to those who
wince under the severity of your lash. But, in my
full belief, you vindicate, by the weight and fulness
of your matter, your right to assume your own
manner : and when I get over the repulsiveness
of the subject itself (doubly repulsive, when, with
words so plain, you strip it of all disguise), I find
in your treatment a lyrical and prophetic grandeur.
Omitting here and there words which are not really

1 Letter from Mr F. W. Newman, July 3, 1870.

JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

needed, I have read out long portions to ladies,
and find that they are felt to be beautiful as well
as noble and valuable. My taste does require
omissions of words which, nevertheless, may the
better stab the dull senses of medical men stupefied
by materialism. ... I find it hard to estimate
conjecturally whether your style will more entice
or repel : for I think that different men will be
differently affected. But in my own name I heartily
thank you for fulfilling a painful task with vigour
and faithfulness so unshrinking, and with a spirit
of holiness which I hope will be diffusive. ... I
read two passages of your pamphlet to the Manchester
meeting against the C.D. Acts."

It will be remembered that the question of the
repeal of these acts was fiercely agitated and as
fiercely opposed. A Royal Commission was appointed
in 1871 ; a Special Commission was appointed in
1879. Though the majority of both reported in
favour of a continuance of the Acts, a majority
of the House of Commons condemned the principles
of them in 1883, and the Acts themselves were
repealed in 1886.

There are few things less profitable than tracing
movements through old controversies. The bitter-
ness and misunderstanding on both sides are pain-
fully apparent. As the footsteps crush the old
ashes, the dust of such things is ungrateful and
distressing ; the generous heat which once brought

HOMOEOPATHY 283

them about has died away with the brains and hearts
which evoked it. The student is tempted to think
that the world would have been none the worse
had neither fire nor ashes ever been. But it is in such
struggles that character is educated and displayed ;
and to have faced unpopularity and disapproval
for the sake of right, to have carried opposition
on questions of principle through the evil days to
success, is a discipline which strengthens and ennobles
the man who has experienced it.

Few will be found to share Wilkinson's judgment
in all the controversies in which he engaged, but
still fewer will fail to see in him a clean and a hard
fighter, ever actuated by fear of wrong and love
of right. To those who saw him most clearly he
was revealed as most loving and universally bene-
volent. His attacks upon what he thought evil
were tremendous and unsparing ; his spirit of humble
brotherhood to erring humanity was an essential
part of his practical religion.

CHAPTER IV

APPRECIATIONS

THIS chapter is devoted to estimations of Garth
Wilkinson's character and work from divers pens.
It contains, however, no letters addressed to him-
self. When Bos well " presumed to animadvert " on
Johnson's eulogy of Garrick in the " Lives of the
Poets," Samuel defended himself by saying, " Why,
sir, some exaggeration must be allowed " ; and,
by a parity of postulation, it is scarcely fair to
expose the words of one who acknowledges a
presentation copy to cold print after the lapse of
years.

Robert Matheson, who himself wrote books too
little known, under the pseudonym of " Corvichen,"
engaged for years in an intimate and candid corre-
spondence with Garth Wilkinson. He wrote, on
hearing of his friend's death : l

" I had been thinking, some days before I received
your note, of the Grand Old Man, and a vague feeling
arose in me that he was away. Then I naturally
thought of his wonderful vigour and his other great
qualities hardly a man like him anywhere. And

1 Letter to Miss Florence Pertz, December 1, 1899.

284

APPRECIATIONS 285

so here is yet another Book published three days
before his death !

" I have often tried to understand him, but always
felt myself foiled in the attempt ; but one thing
was and remains clear that he was a prophet,
or National Teacher, by character and calling.
Two very necessary characteristics of a prophet
seemed strong in him heroic indignation and
tenderness.

" No doubt he was widely known ; but it is
astonishing how comparatively few know about
him. The worse for them ! Prophets are not
popular characters."

An old medical friend, upon the same occasion,
wrote as follows :

" I had the greatest possible admiration for
Dr Wilkinson. I used often to say that I considered
him, Dr Martineau and Ruskin the greatest masters
of lucid, epigrammatic, terse, felicitous style in
writing English, then living ; and that to those
three I owed whatever facility in English composi-
tion I possessed. He altered his style of writing
very much in his later publications, and, as I told
him, I missed the felicity, the wit and fantasy of
the older style. He wrote, during his last days,
under a deeper sense of obligation to the truths
which he felt himself commissioned to declare
and with less consciousness of his readers who could
be either stirred or amused or excited by the force

286 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

of his picturesque utterance. My knowledge of
him dates from about the year 1851 or 2, when he
became the medical attendant of my father and
sister. I had known him by repute before that,
as a friend also of my uncle, Dr Morell, and as a
translator of Swedenborg. After that, I used often
to see him, and always felt instructed and inspired
by his conversation.

" I remember calling on him soon after he
published his little volume of inspirational poems,
and he told me how he produced them putting
his hand to paper and accepting any suggestion
that rose in his mind. ' I will see what comes to
my hand about you,' he said ; and as soon as his
hand rested on the paper, he said : ' The first words
are he stands,' and then the two following verses
followed :

He stands upon a hill of green,
Where flowers are rare and sad ;
But brighter things are near him seen
And things to make him glad.

The sky hath openings when the earth
Hath closed her to some (?) drear :
Then gird thyself for spirit birth,
And choke the snakes of fear.

"These verses accurately reflected the rather
sad and sombre tinge of my mood and experiences
at that time.

" I think your grandfather was a little disappointed

APPRECIATIONS 287

in me because I did not sufficiently enter into all
his theological and philosophical teachings. In fact,
I found it rather difficult to do so : as he grew older,
if his thoughts grew deeper and more solemn, they
also became to me less distinct. I could not follow
their track at all times : and, when I did, I often
felt dissent. ... In fact I thought that the dear
and venerable old Doctor was just a little intolerant,
and standing aloof from some of the best tendencies
of the time. But he was one of the grandest men
I ever knew, and I shall always look back upon my
friendship with him with pride and delight. I do
not think Emerson's well-known eulogy was at all
exaggerated."

In Volume III. of a New Series of The University
Magazine there appeared a course of " Contemporary
Portraits " of the eighteenth, of which Wilkinson
was the subject. This "portrait," which was
unsigned, appeared in the number for June 1879.
As the most thorough examination of Wilkinson's
work with which we are acquainted, extracts from
it will be interesting, but it must be borne in mind
that the estimation appeared full twenty years
before that work was completed.

" Some there are who have burning things to say,
and, avoiding the pitfalls that attend upon con-
troversy, content themselves with saying their
say, and, instead of bringing it by strenuous dis-
semination before the general public, bequeath

288 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

it to such as may be sympathisers, and leave it to
make its way abroad in due time through its own
force and vehemence. They are glad to do without
the sweets and sufferings, the perils and powers
of modern notoriety, and to follow in the road of
the philosophers of old time, who spoke only to such
as had ears.

" The subject of the present sketch is known in
one way or other to most of the bearers of the best-
known names amongst us. In Mudie's Library
there are probably next to no copies of any of his
works ; we do not remember to have seen him
reviewed in either the Daily Telegraph or the Saturday
Review ; his books seem never to be advertised
in the usual channels ; but if such as Carlyie,
Browning, Tennyson, Emerson, Longfellow,
Hawthorne, were to be asked dubiously about him
by someone who should think him obscure, one
might perhaps have replied, ' I travelled with him ' ;
another, ' He was a friend of my youth ' ; another,
c We have had long arguments together ' ; a fourth,
' I have taken his medicine ' ; a fifth, ' When I was
once in great doubt, I drew much from him.'

" Without advertisement, our author's books
find a public, and some to the extent of several
editions. He has too broad and varied a field of
work to be sectarian, but so far as he may go by
that name, it is in connection with what is called
the New Church, a body holding by the traditions

APPRECIATIONS 289

as interpreted by Swedenborg. This little Church
contains a large proportion of men who move in
higher realms of thought than the members of most
other sects, and no doubt the works of so large a
thinker as Dr Wilkinson are especially esteemed
among them. . . .

" At this early period of his life Dr Wilkinson
showed that predilection for principles, whether
as forming the basis of philosophy, or the guidance
of physical research, which has shown itself so
strongly in his later writings, and, coupled with the
originality of his nature and force of his sympathies,
has made him rather a religious political economist,
than either a medical specialist or a Swedenborgian
long and ardently though he has dwelt upon the
works of the Swedish seer. . . .

' The generality so prefer the trivial to the re-
condite that it is probable that the subjects upon
which Dr Wilkinson has chosen to discourse have
prevented his having due literary recognition as
a master of English prose. The following, from
his introduction to the 'Economy of the Animal
Kingdom,' may serve as a specimen of his style.

" ' Accordingly he (Swedenborg) gives no bond
to reconstruct society, nor professes to be able to
drag the secrets of truth into day by an unerring
or mechanical method; but having obtained a
sufficiency of doctrinal implements for present use,
and mindful that active life is the best lot of man

290 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

and the finest means of improvement, he builds such
an edifice as his materials and opportunities permit,
and arrives at such an end as a good man may be
satisfied with. The perfecting of instruments he
knows must be successive, but that the use of them
must not be postponed, and therefore he lays out
his possessions to the best advantage, in the con-
fidence that this is the truest way to benefit posterity.'

" The following passages from the same work
will instance both philosophy and style :

" ' Reason is as the hand of man, but imagination
is the palpus or tenaculum of human nature. Reason
beholds the same surfaces as imagination, only it
does not stop with the surface, but penetrates to
the form and mechanism underlying the colour and
shape of the object, being in fact that power which
acknowledges the intrinsic solidity of nature.

" 'Great confusion has undoubtedly been introduced
by regarding body as the same with matter. For
body is the necessary ultimatum of each plane
of creation, and thus there is a spiritual body as well
as a natural body, and by parity of fact, there is a
spiritual world as well as a natural world : but
matter is limited to the lowest plane, where alone
it is identical with body. There is no matter in the
spiritual world, but there is body notwithstanding,
or an ultimate form, which is less living than the
interior forms ; which is the solid in relation
to the fluid, the fibre and the skin and the mem-

APPRECIATIONS

brane relatively to the living blood in its natural
degrees.

" ' It is wrong therefore to attempt to transcend
the fact of embodiment ; the hope is mistaken
that would lead us to endeavour thus after pure
spirituality. The way to the pure spiritual is the
moral, and the moral delights to exhibit itself in
actions, and body is the theatre of actions, and
by consequence the mirror and continent of the
spiritual. . . .'

" A large portion of Dr Wilkinson's later writings
is devoted to special topics, and seems to arise out
of a consciousness on his part that the public requires
protection against specialism of all kinds, which is
apt to become despotism. Society at large is prone
to deride such chivalrous championship as chimerical,
and to trust blindly in the virtues of a majority,
and the practical unimpeachableness of things as
they are. But Dr Wilkinson looks deeper and sees
wickedness to the poor and oppression of the weak,
in the unquestioned action of powerful legalized
cliques. As poor humanity was once overridden
by priesthood, he appears to think it is in danger
of being subjected to an equal tyranny from the
high-priests of medical orthodoxy. There no doubt
is a tendency to make certain questions " strictly
professional," and to shut out from general un-
professional humanity any right of forming an
opinion upon important matters in regard to which

292 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

professional opinion insists upon being implicitly
accepted as final. As a matter of principle, Dr
Wilkinson is right, and he and his followers ought
to be welcomed as the protectors of lazy and ignorant
humanity. The majority of us have been vaccinated
at an age when we were too young to rebel ; we are
not of the class that is subjected to forcible intro-
spection ; nor do we belong to the ranks of animals
used for vivisection ; we are consequently inclined
to leave such matters alone, as pot affecting
ourselves :

" Let the galled jade wince, our withers are
un wrung. In politics alone we admit a majority to
honour, and that perhaps only in proportion to its
size. In matters that have to do with our bodies, we
are wont to take refuge in blind faith, or equally blind
distrust, in what is prescribed for us. Dr Wilkinson
sees danger in such conventional acceptance, and
finds in the governmental medical regime under
which we live, the same principle in action as
Le Sage saw in Dr Sangrado, the Hippocrates of
Valladolid. . . .

"This subject (compulsory vaccination) has
aroused Dr Wilkinson to most unphilosophical
wrath. We are so accustomed nowadays to writings
from which feeling is eliminated, and which have
a cold, and, so to speak, heartless regard to facts,
that Dr Wilkinson must no doubt to many seem
over-impetuous and lost in his own indignation.

APPRECIATIONS 293

The intellect by itself, when applied to the great
problems of the world, and finding them hard to
solve, is apt to become callous, and, leaving them
alone, to busy itself with what it imagines it knows
with certainty. We ought to be grateful to Dr
Wilkinson for refusing to ignore even minor questions,
or to treat them in any but the largest public light*
In his philosophy, human life is integral, and to be
reverenced in all its details, not for the sake of
the details, but for the sacredness of the whole.
Certain evils and compromises, despotisms of pro-
fessional trades -unions, and callousness of licensed
power, which press most heavily upon the poor,
the weak and the obscure members of society, excite
his indignation, as being violations of humanity.
If he should found a school, it will be of those who
are practical because they are first spiritual ; and
it may be found that the most consistently, minutely
and intensely practical will be those whose percep-
tions are made keen and sensitive by marking the
workings of spiritual laws, whereby the degradations
of daily life impress the more distinctly, and stimulate
them to a more earnest passion of effort to find
the remedy. But to the sensual and slothful, the
superficial and the selfish, it will at all times be
difficult to distinguish the heightened insight and
loving passion from fanaticism."

In The Letters of Dante Gabriel Rosetti, edited by
Dr George Birkbeck Hill (page 201), we have an

294 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

interesting glimpse of Garth Wilkinson. Rosetti
wrote to Mr Allingham [near the end of 1862].

" You will remember my troubling you once or
twice about that Bogie poem book of Wilkinson's.
I am wanting it now to mention in a passage on
Blake's poetry which I am writing for the Life
never quite completed. Could you kindly let me
have the loan of yours as soon as you can."

A note adds :

" * That Bogie poem ' was Improvisations from the
Spirit by Dr J. Garth Wilkinson, the homceopathist
who was Miss Siddal's physician in 1854. Hawthorne,
whose children he attended in December 1857,
wrote of him : ' He is a homoeopathist, and is known
in scientific and general literature ; at all events,
a sensible and enlightened man, with an un-English
freedom of mind on some points. For example,
he is a Swedenborgian and a believer in modern
Spiritualism. He showed me some drawings that
had been made under the spiritual influence by a
miniature painter who possesses no imaginative
power of his own, and is merely a good mechanical
and liberal copyist ; but these drawings, represent-
ing angels and allegorical people were done by an
influence which directed the artistic hand, he not
knowing what his next touch would be, nor what
the final result.' . . . According to W. B. Scott,
6 Emerson said, " Wilkinson was most like Bacon of
all men living."' Scott adds that 'Wilkinson was

APPRECIATIONS 295

as tall and as straight as a spear, and looked steadily
at you from behind his spectacles as if he saw your
thoughts as distinctly as your nose, while Tennyson
cared little and noted little of either.' '

We conclude our account of Garth Wilkinson with
three extracts from obituary notices which closely
followed his death. A

From the New Church Magazine, November 1879.

" He was one of the most useful and ardent
members of the Swedenborg Society. In the
Society's rooms there is both a bust and a portrait
of him. Kindly and genial, he won the affections
of others. Keen in perception, he possessed a
fluency enjoyed by very few. His later literary
style was, in the opinion of some, a little too classic
and ornate for modern taste, but none can doubt
the vigour of his writing or the brilliancy of his
illustrative power.

" Students of the human body not unfre-
quently become materialists or agnostics. With
Dr Wilkinson the perception of spiritual realities
was as a fire to his bones. His * Human Body
and its Connection with Man ' is one of the most
vigorous pleas we know for the recognition of the
spiritual nature of man.

6 When we remember that his literary work was
done in the leisure left from the active and onerous
duties of his profession, it is clear that he must have
been surpassingly industrious. . . .

296 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

" His influence has been widely felt ; not only
in the New Church but throughout the literary and
philosophical world. An able physician, a clear
thinker, an original and exceedingly industrious
writer, he had won the respect and affection of all
who knew him, and of many more who had not been
privileged to enjoy personal intercourse with him.
It would be wrong for us to grieve over-much, for
we know that his profound convictions about the
spiritual life are now being verified by him, and he
will have the reward of the good works that follow
a life industrious, full of zeal for the truth and earnest,
self-sacrificing labour for the spiritual advancement
of the world. EDITOR."

From the New Church Review, January 1900.

In a review of " Isis and Osiris," under the title
of " Dr Wilkinson's Last Book."

. . . In his dedicatory letter to Professor
Wiedemann, of the University of Bonn, our author
affirms, ' I have been inclined to give my book the
additional name of a Tract for the Times ' a tract,
we may suppose, for ' these vivisecting heathen
times ' to borrow a very Wilkinsonian phrase found
on one of the last pages in the volume. And surely
it is a noble and timely appeal to the present genera-
tion, with dead ritual within the Church, and dead
materialism both within and without, to open the
lungs of intelligence to the Breath of the Lord of

APPRECIATIONS 297

Life. What we stand in need of to-day is a
quickened sense of the Lord's presence as the life
of this Universe and the soul of His Church. Dr
Wilkinson's farewell word comes as an inspiration
to a higher faith and larger trust. And now, having
finished his work on earth, it is pleasant to think
of his great and magnanimous soul in the fuller
atmosphere of heavenly planes, where the Book
of Respirations is open as the Book of the Lord's
Life, and all the inhabitants are living breaths,
animate with a divine influx.

" Coming of an old Durham family, Dr Wilkinson
had many of the rugged North of England qualities,
among them the gift of laconic and vigorous speech.
He has often reminded his readers of Carlyle, and
Emerson likened his rhetoric to c the armoury of
the invincible knights of old.' It is not easy,
however, for everyone to read him. Many years
ago, when 'The Human Body and its Connection
with Man ' was published, Professor Bush praised
the substance, but criticized what seemed to him
the difficult and affected style. As a matter of fact,
the book grew out of conversations which the author
had with the late Henry James, who was then living
in London, not far from the Doctor's office. A
physician's life is exacting, and does not favour
long periods of quiet composition and revision.
The author of * The Human Body ' and its numerous
successors, thought out between times the manifold

298 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

points that commanded him and jotted them down
at odd moments of leisure. This professional handi-
cap, limiting his time of utterance, no doubt is largely
responsible for the oracular character of many of
his statements. Dr Wilkinson was simply surcharged
with the thought that was in him. Mr James
complained that Emerson's private thought and
conversation were incomparably inferior to his
public utterances. Dr Wilkinson exhibited most
markedly the opposite trait. His personality was
inspiring, and his private utterances on high themes
were crammed with vital meaning, and wore a
drapery of language that no polish of revision could
make more fit or graceful. To those who have
enjoyed this conversation, his books seem like the
recurrence of personal visits.

"The reader will get most from Dr Wilkinson's
writings by reading them leisurely, and taking
their thoughts as hints. The ideas are given as
suggestions, and stimulate the reader to individual
mental activity. There is a unity through all
these notes and comments, dealing with apparently
scattered topics, but the unity is not of literary
form and consistency, but of honest devotion to
truth and unimpeachable perception of spiritual
and divine verities.

" As a secular and lay student of spiritual things,
Dr Wilkinson's work is of unique value to the church.
He had no cheap antipathies to 6 ecclesiasticism,'

APPRECIATIONS 299

although he kept aloof from organizations. He
pursued his studies and lived his life as a private
English gentleman, with broad sympathies with
his time and wide knowledge of the international
world. Most of our New Church writers become
accustomed to accommodating themselves to the
state of mind of those who are supposed to know
comparatively little of spiritual truth. Hence we
rarely have the expression of thought that is the
full measure of the mind. Our writers and speakers
are tethered by their avocation. Dr Wilkinson
writes neither professionally nor professorially. His
mind strikes out to utter itself, and not to come
down to primary school demonstration. His books
are the true expressions of the best reaches of his
own mind. Hence the deepest student finds them
virile and fecund. There is intellectual exhilaration
in understanding them, and their originality and
vitality make it impossible to skip them."

A notice of Garth Wilkinson's death appeared
in the Daily News. Our extract betrays the
practised and sympathetic hand of a dearly
esteemed friend.

" Emerson's description of him as a c startling
re-appearance of Swedenbo^g after a hundred years *
had a certain literal significance. His mind was of
exactly the same cast. It naturally and without
effort, saw in every external fact only an inner
spiritual significance. Phenomena, in their merely

300 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

physical relations, seemed absolutely meaningless
to him, and he moved amid ideas with a certainty
that might have been envied by the most convinced
materialist in his grasp of the ordinary facts of life.
He was one of those born to believe. Personally
he was a man of the sweetest and most winning nature
and the gentlest disposition. He had survived
nearly all his most eminent contemporaries, and,
but for the care with which he was tended to the
last by his own family, there would have been
something of pathos in the solitude of his old age."

INDEX

ADAM and Eve, clothing of, 215
America, impressions of, 110
Animal magnetism, 32, 40, 43, 74
Augustine, St, 172

BACON, Francis, 181

Berkeleyism, 190

Blake, William, 25-31

edition of Songs of Innocence,

etc., 23

Bright, Mr John, 269
British Museum, 22
Browning, Robert, sen., 32
Browning, Robert, jun., 31, 206,

288
Butler, Mrs Josephine, 112, 280

CARLYLE, Thomas, 33-38, 86, 205,

288

Catholicity, 239
Clissold, Rev. A., 238
Coleridge, S. T., 41
Commerce, 221
Contagious Diseases (Women) Act,

112, 264, 279-282
Correspondences, the doctrine of }

211, 235, 255
Crowds, 212
Cycling for women, 259

DARWIN, functions of, 241
Depression, mental, 215
Diary of Swedenborg, 169, 196
Duties, humble, 231

EARTHQUAKES, 214

Editions, by J. J. G. W., of
Blake's Songs of Innocence, etc.,
25-31 ; of Brereton's One
Teacher, One Law, 121 ; of
Swedenborg's Doctrine of

Charity, 23 ; Opuscula, 46 ;
(Economia Regni Animalis, 46
Emerson, R. W., 50, 143, 150,
153, 173, 203, 237, 288, 298

FARCINB, 262

Fiction, 242

Fourier, 53-58, 226, 227

Franco-Prussian War, 113

GLANDBRINE, 262

HARRIS, Thomas Lake, 102, 103
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 288, 294
Hekla Lava, 262
Hell, torments of, 227
Hjaltin, I. A., 85, 134
Homoeopathy, 16, 79, 243-263;

doctrine of correspondences in,

256, 258, 259
Hypnotism, 74

INCARNATION, doctrine of The, 155
"Infallibility" of Swedenborg,

160

Influx, 240, 241
Intelligence, worship of, 208

JAMES, Henry, sen., 41

LECTURES, The Grouping o
Animals, 45 ; Science for A
47 ; Physics of Human Nature,
66-73 ; Our Social Health, 104

Lewis, Mrs G. H. ("George
Eliot"), 103

Livingstone, Dr, 239

Longfellow, 110, 288

MACREADT, 32

Marston, Dr Westland, 99, 127

801

302 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON

Martineau, Miss H., 205
Matheson, Mr R, 284
Montez, Lola, 103

NEW CHURCH, Wilkinson's posi

tion toward, 174
Newman, Mr F. W., 112, 281
Norse languages, 85
Nourishment, spiritual and

natural, 213

OLIPHANT, Lawrence, 102
Outram, General, 106
Owen, Robert, 64

PANTHEISM, 226
Paris in 1848, 58-64
Patmore, Mr Coventry, 206

REED, Mr Sampson, 205, 209
Revelations, successive, 130, 223
Robinson, W. Crabb, 52
Rosetti, D. G., 293
Ruskin, John, 95, 270
Rydberg, Professor V., 133, 173

SCOTT, Mr W. B., 294

Silica, 262

Siljestrom, Rektor, 85, 271

Spiritualism, 89

Spiritual progress, understand-
ing, 229

Svedborg, Bishop Jasper, 128

Swedenborg, Emanuel, Dreams
of, 169 ; Diary of, 169, 196 ;
writings of, 233 ; MSS. of, 233,
235 ; and matrimony, 235 ; and
vivisection, 276 ; his chemistry,
235 ; translated into Icelandic,
238

TAFEL, Professor, 131, 197

Teetotalism, 79

Tennant, Mr Dillon, 74, 210

Toasts, 118

Translations by Wilkinson, from
Swedish of Siljestrom, 120 ;
from Latin of Swedenborg,
Doctrine of Charity, 22 ; Last
Judgment, 23 ; Fallo' ~

23 ; Regnum Animate, 24, 44 ;
CEconomia Regni Animalis, 45,
201 ; Posthumous Tracts, 46,
Hieroglyphic Key, 46, 235 ; Out-
lines of a Philosophical Argu-
ment, 46 ; The Generative Organs,
84, 203 ; Sapientia Angelica de
Divino Amore, 122
Tulk, Mr C. A., 25, 188, 234

VACCINATION, 38, 116, 121, 264-

275
Vivisection, 121, 264, 296

WHITEING, Mr R., 242

Wilkinson, J. J. G., birth and
family, 1 ; childhood, 2-13 ;
schools, 5, 7, 13 ; apprentice-
ship, 15 ; qualifications, 17 ;
practice, 17, 21, 104, 263; in-
troduction to Swedenborg's
works, 18 ; betrothal, 19 ;
marriage, 39 ; political views,
91 : tours in Norway, 100, 117 ;
in Algiers, 104 ; in Spain, 105 ;
in Germany, 109, 115, 119 ; in
Iceland, 109 ; in America, 110 ;
death of Mrs Wilkinson, 124 ;
personal appearance, 125, 294 ;
death, 138 ; as a contro-
versialist, 283. See also Trans-
lations and Works.

Works, original, by Wilkinson :
A Sketch of Swedenborg, etc.,
39 ; Remarks on Swedenborg '*
Economy of Animal Kingdom,
46 ; Popular Sketch of Sweden-
borg's Philosophy, 47 ; Life of
Swedenborg, 76 ; Human Body
and its Connection with Man,
80, 182 ; Painting vrith Both
Hands, 95 ; Improvisations from
the Spirit, 95-100, 294 ; Un-
licensed Medicine, 95 ; War,
Cholera, and the Ministry of
Health, 93 ; Use of Glanderine,
etc., 100; Homoeopathic Principle
applied to Insanity, 100 ; For-
cible Introspection of Women,
113 ; A Free State and Free

INDEX

308

Medicine, 113 ; Swedenborg's
Doctrines and the Translation of
his Works, 120; Pasteur and
Jenner, 121 ; Treatment of
Smallpox, 121 ; Greater Origins
and Issues of Life and Death,
122 ; Medical Specialism, 122 ;
Oannes according to Berosus,

127 ; The Soul is Form, etc.,

128 ; The African and True

Christian Religion, 130 ; Epi-
demic Man and hi-s Visitations,
130; The Affections of Armed
Powers, 133; Voluspa, 134;
Isis and Osiris, 137 ; Sweden-
borg among the Doctors, 256
Worlds, many inhabited, 218

YOUNG, Mr W., 271

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